Making Time For Your Mission-Driven Projects
by Kath McCusker
I recently went to a training about time management where the concept of a “time management matrix” was presented. One way to look at all the things on your to-do list is to sort them into four broad categories:
Important & Urgent
Important & Not Urgent
Not Important & Urgent
Not Important & Not Urgent
The tasks that rise to the top of our to-do lists must get done right away. “Urgent” in this framing refers to when the task needs to get done – it’s not a comment on its importance or value.
Many of us struggle to make time for the Important/Not Urgent category yet this is the category of things that includes “mission-driven projects”, and things that give our life purpose, meaning, and joy. Kelly Vogel, the Executive Function Coach who led the time management workshop encouraged us to “design our time” by scheduling in these important (but not immediately urgent) tasks into our calendars and lives.
One way that HELM carves out time for these Important/Not Urgent things is during our quarterly company retreats. On the agenda at each retreat is a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) topic. While JEDI work is absolutely essential, it’s often deprioritized over other more seemingly critical items. We are big on prefigurativism here at HELM; meaning we strive to have our modes of organization and social relationships reflect the future society we desire. We believe the ends of our movements are shaped by the means we employ. Engaging head-on with themes of justice and anti-oppression within our company, our communities, and our industry is about building the world we seek to be a part of now.
Last Spring’s company retreat included the topic of disability justice. Our team watched the film Crip Camp and had a powerful discussion about the movement for disability justice and the ways HELM can do more to address ableism in our company, with our clients, and on our projects. At the Summer retreat we just completed in Maine, we focused on race and racism. We all watched the documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay which argues that the industrial prison complex is on the same continuum as slavery and Jim Crow policies and is institutional racism at work – a mechanism to deprive black people in the United States of their full rights and liberties. NYTimes Film Critic Manohla Dargis summarizes:
“The movie hinges on the 13th Amendment, as the title indicates, in ways that may be surprising, though less so for those familiar with Michelle Alexander’s 2010 best seller, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Ratified in 1865, the amendment states in full: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” As Ms. Alexander underscores, slavery was abolished for everyone except criminals.”
But what does this have to do with our work at HELM? That was one of our prompt questions for the discussion at our retreat. As our mission centers on the triple bottom line of planet, people, and prosperity, anti-racism work is central to the people part AND can’t be separated from planet or prosperity since these are intersectional topics.
Next, what do we do about it? Because we had the time to think and talk and plan, we came up with a list of action items - a combination of things we can do as a company and things we can encourage our client companies to do.
What are those Important but Not Urgent topics at your company? How can you “design your time” so that these things don’t perpetually get sent to the end of your to-do list?