A building leader wants to tackle low-priority tasks

Q: “How do I make sure that all of the lower-priority important tasks that are put on the back burner actually get taken care of? As a building leader, I have a pile of tasks to handle at all times, and emergencies always seem to knock important work down. I feel like I’m dropping the ball. Help!”

A: First, you’re not dropping the ball. The fact that you are aware of the lower priority work and it hasn’t been moved permanently to the backburner is an indicator of that. As a leader, you must give yourself grace for the inherent need to prioritize in order to work efficiently in a school because anytime we prioritize something, we are deprioritizing something else. So as long as you don’t forget what needs to be done, you are already halfway there.

You’re describing one of the most universal leadership stressors in a school: The work that’s important is often the least likely to scream for attention. The goal isn’t to eliminate emergencies (not realistic in a building) or even get rid of meetings that may be put on your calendar by other leadership if you have a central office role and not a building one. The goal is to build a system where the “quiet” work still has an engine behind it—so it doesn’t depend on you having a miracle day with no interruptions. The strategies below are designed to be doable, repeatable, and protective of your sanity.

Stop treating ‘important but not urgent work as optional (and put it on the calendar)

A simple framework that helps leaders protect what matters is the Eisenhower Matrix: urgent/important (do), important/not urgent (schedule), urgent/not important (delegate), and neither (eliminate). For school leaders, nearly everything that improves student outcomes sits in important/not urgent, so it must be scheduled and protected—not squeezed in “if there’s time.”

So here’s what you can do: pick two recurring blocks each week (even 45 minutes each) labeled something like “Instructional leadership,” “Family partnership,” or “Compliance/admin catch-up,” and treat them like non-negotiable meetings. If you cancel, you must reschedule immediately, just as you would for a district meeting.

Build a ‘Triage + Capture’ habit so interruptions don’t become task magnets

Interruptions are part of the job, and sometimes they’re a relationship-building opportunity. But they can also become a way for other people’s urgency to become your to-do list. Edutopia’s framing is useful here: keep your calendar, stay organized, and treat interruptions as moments for connection — while still tracking what didn’t get done so it doesn’t fall through the cracks.

A practical add-on is an interruption triage script: decide what you’ll handle now, what you’ll note for later, and what you’ll redirect or delegate. The “triage system” approach recommends guiding people quickly to the point, then classifying the interruption so you can respond without surrendering the whole day.

You can try saying things like the below or revise them to make sense of the way you would say them:

• “I can’t do this justice in the moment—can you email me the core question and your deadline?”
• “What’s the consequence if we address this tomorrow vs. today?”
• “I can do A or B today—what should come first?”
• “This is actually ____’s responsibility. I’ll loop them in and you’ll hear back by ____.”

Replace the giant to-do list with two smaller lists: ‘Now’ and ‘Next’

I’m a master of to-do lists. It’s how I stay focused when big important tasks are in front of me. When I was in my leadership role, I started and ended every day with a list. What do I need to do today? Crossing off that which was accomplished with pride.  However, when everything is in one pile on the must-do side, the urgent wins by default. Here’s how you can start to make sure less urgent tasks don’t get completely lost.

Your “now list” (daily)

Limit it to three outcomes (not 12 tasks). For example:

• “Complete observation follow-ups for new teachers”
• “Submit grant report section”
• “Call family re: attendance plan”

If you finish early, you pull from the next list—not from new chaos.

Your “next list” (weekly)

This is where the backburner lives, but with accountability. It’s not “someday.” It’s “not today, but it’s coming up.” This is also how you protect yourself from the urgency trap: research summarized in Harvard Business Review notes people routinely choose shorter-deadline tasks even when less-urgent tasks are equally easy and more valuable. In other words, the human brain is biased toward “due sooner,” not “matters more.” A system compensates for that bias.

At the end of the week, make sure to go back to the weekly list. Now now some of those tasks can be moved to the daily if they haven’t been accomplished yet. The longer we push things back, the harder it is to come back to them in my experience.

Delegate the ‘urgent-but-not-important’ work—on purpose, with closure

A core insight from the Eisenhower Matrix guidance for school leaders is that you recover the most time by delegating urgent-but-not-important items (and eliminating nonessential ones), because you’re reclaiming time for important work.

Two delegation upgrades that reduce boomerang tasks:

• Delegate the whole outcome, not a piece (“Own the family night logistics,” not “Call the vendor”).
• Set a check-in point (“Send me a one-paragraph status by Wednesday 2 p.m.”)

Delegation isn’t abandonment; it’s designing sustainable systems while giving your team an opportunity to step up and share responsibility. It shows trust and creates solid work relationships so long as you aren’t expecting everyone else to do everything. Choose your delegation wisely and spread it around, so you don’t burn out your people or create bigger challenges because your delegated tasks don’t get accomplished. (I’m not saying you should do it yourself, I’m just saying, be intentional with who you choose and don’t lean on that singular person for everything.)

Being a leader is a challenge for so many reasons, and it is easy to lose sight of important things in the day to day shuffle. Remember that you’re not trying to become a different person by creating routines so things don’t fall through the cracks. You’re trying to become harder to derail.

The feeling of “dropping the ball” often comes from an invisible problem: Your system is built to respond, not to finish. When you add protected time for important work, a triage script for interruptions, and a weekly review that re-surfaces the backburner, you create a leadership cadence that survives emergencies—without requiring you to be superhuman.

If you have an issue that you would like me to address, please email me at ssackstein@educatorsrising.org or complete this form. You will be kept anonymous.