There are times when we all feel buried under a ton of to-dos, many of which seem both urgent and important. Between work and home, a typical executive has over a hundred projects going, with countless associated tasks and an avalanche of requests flying out of their inboxes daily. And all that has been intensified dramatically by the coronavirus pandemic. Even if you’re not on the front lines, you may be feeling pretty overwhelmed. It’s hard to figure out where to even start.

Fear not. There’s an effective route out of this morass and into a promised land where you’ll have clarity about exactly what to prioritize and how to it get it done right now.

With huge thank yous to Steven Covey (author of the perennially best-selling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) and David Allen (the similarly best-selling author of Getting Things Done), this route has 4 steps:

1. Identify the most important roles you play right now. E.g., “client-contact for xyz corp.,” or “corporate strategy off-site chair,” or “Lisa’s Mom.”
2. Identify the most important current goal for each of these roles, like, “land the xyz account.” or “get a plan to integrate our division into our new parent company,” or “determine the best middle school for Lisa,”
3. Identify the most important project right now to reach each goal. A project is anything that has more than two steps.
4. Identify the next immediate, physical step for each project. (make a phone call, find a document, schedule a meeting). Put these steps at the top of your to-do list. These are your priorities — from the grand, strategic foci for your most important jobs, to the small actions that will actually make things happen.

A few additional thoughts:

if you make a list of every project and ID the next physical step for each, you’ll probably find that you can’t do a damn thing on many of them till somebody else does their part. This lets you feel very virtuous about not being the Bozo holding things up and makes clear whom you have to bug to get things going.

It is VERY important to focus on goals and projects that will make things better and have a lasting impact. Otherwise you’ll get all hung up in temporary fixes and patches — putting fingers into dikes rather than building new drainage systems.

Even though it goes against every good management rule in the book, you don’t have to go through this whole rigamarole regularly. — crisis management is our middle name! It is great when you’re feeling totally slammed

Come to think of it, though, if “totally slammed” is pretty much your normal state of affairs (like most good leaders, based on my own unscientific survey), it might be best to keep these four steps close at hand.

As always — please leave comments below, sharing tips for setting priorities and coping with mega-overloads. Consider it your good deed for the day… and maybe your own personal contribution to fighting the plague!