How to Prioritize When Fires Are Burning All Around You

🔥 Crisis Mode

Ever had one of those days where everything seems to go wrong at once? Every time you try to handle one problem, another pops up that seems just as urgent. It’s stressful – but you can learn to manage it, and make sure that those fires don’t burn you.

🔝 Protect your priorities

At the start of every day, be clear on what your top priorities are – no more than three. That way, when there's a fire, you can weigh it against your priorities and determine if it takes higher priority.

✅ Build a checklist for responding to fires

Having a clear set of criteria helps you triage fires that come up. Here are some good questions to run through:

• Is this new problem time-sensitive? • Is it mission-critical? • Is it customer-facing?

🔍 Ask critical questions to hone in on what’s needed

Once you've determined that a particular fire is high priority, you need to get to the root of the problem, perform critical care, and move on.

Ask, “What’s the one thing I can help you with?” to learn what’s absolutely critical. After that’s done, it’s time to move on to the next fire.