There is nearly always more work than there is time to do it.
Which is why the skill of prioritisation becomes more important as you become more senior. You are not simply deciding what to do first. You are deciding where to put limited resources: your time, attention, energy, money, headspace and the capacity of the people around you.
Increasingly, you also need to decide what deserves your best thinking.
If you work in a business where time is billable, there is an understandable awareness of what an hour costs. Visible output is easy to account for: a meeting happened, a drawing was reviewed, a client query was answered, a problem was solved.
Thinking is harder to account for, yet as your role becomes more senior, more of your work relies on judgement. You are making decisions where there may not be an obvious answer, and that work needs some space.
What helps you think well?
When everything is urgent, you can still make decisions, but you have less opportunity to consider alternatives, ask somebody else's opinion, come back to an idea or change your mind.
And different people need different conditions to think well. You might need uninterrupted time, a conversation, a walk, a sketchbook, time to write things down, or the chance to leave something and return to it.
Know what helps you think well, and protect it where you can.
And don't only count the hours. Some tasks take very little time but a surprising amount of attention, preparation or headspace.
Ask where the quality of your thinking is likely to make the biggest difference.
It might be a difficult conversation, a new business opportunity, developing someone in your team or thinking about where the practice needs to be six months from now.
The challenge is that this kind of work is often important without being urgent. It is easy to leave it until there is space for it — and there rarely is.
“Prioritising well means making time for the thinking your role requires, not only the work that needs delivering.”
What does it cost when you don’t make space?
Some of the most important leadership work is also the least immediate: reading, thinking, sharing knowledge, developing people and looking ahead..
One of my clients recently described reading and sharing knowledge as the work that makes them feel more like a director. Yet it is also the work they struggle to prioritise when billable project work demands their attention.
And sometimes that pressure is built into the role. If you are expected to meet a high billable-hours target, it can be difficult to justify time spent on work that does not have an obvious project code attached to it.
But continually pushing it back has consequences:
You have less opportunity to step back and see the bigger picture.
Knowledge and ideas stay with individuals rather than being shared.
Longer-term issues are left until they become immediate ones.
Your visibility and credibility can suffer because less of your thinking is being seen.
You may start questioning whether you are contributing enough strategically, despite spending your time doing exactly what the business requires of you.
Strategic work can be difficult to prioritise precisely because nobody is necessarily asking for it today. But that does not make it optional.
What is your calendar telling you?
I encourage clients to use their calendars for much more than meetings, because a calendar is quite good evidence of what your working week is currently making room for.
If reading, thinking, business development, developing your team or looking ahead matter to your role, where do they sit in your week?
Your calendar can give that work a legitimate place alongside delivery: time to prepare, read, write, think something through or come back to a decision.
Strategic thinking is work. If your value is measured largely through billable output, making room for it can feel difficult to justify. But senior roles require time to deliver and time to think beyond delivery.
As leadership becomes more about judgement, prioritising well means protecting the thinking that sits beyond immediate delivery.
Give that thinking a legitimate place in your working week. Take a look at your calendar. Does it make room for the full job you are there to do?
PS. Questions like this are at the heart of the Architect’s Leadership Journal — simple prompts that create space for better leadership thinking.