A confession: I shouldn’t be writing this piece. This morning I went to my desk sheepishly, surreptitiously, almost as if I were... cheating.
For a year, I’ve been unfaithful, picking up one-night flings – a review here, an interview there. More than 120 at last count. As I’ve written promiscuously, my true love has been neglected. If journalism is a mistress, a book is a wife.
On my desk is a stack of library books. Research waiting to happen. I’ve been calling it the ‘SBI’ (stagnant book idea) or ‘DBI’ (dormant book idea). There never seems to be enough time or brain space to make a start.
‘What you need,’ said my friend Natalie, ‘is the “Urgent not Important” matrix.’
Everyone needs a Natalie. We’ve had different careers – she as a theatre director, I as a journalist and author – but she always has the right advice.
Her diagnosis: I’ve been running after the Urgent – emails, deadlines, trains, festivals – when I needed to stop and look the Important – my next book – in the eye.
Natalie didn’t invent the matrix. It came from a 1954 President Eisenhower speech:
‘I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important... the important are never urgent.’
At just 26, Natalie and Carrie Cracknell were appointed joint directors of Notting Hill’s Gate Theatre.
‘We were running the Gate with a turnover of £750,000’ says Natalie, who has since directed at the Young Vic, the Almeida and the RSC. ‘We’d only ever run our student overdrafts.’
Looking for a motto to work by, they rejected Mark Twain’s ‘Eat a live frog every morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day’ (ie, do difficult tasks first), and settled on Eisenhower.
Today, the Eisenhower matrix applies more than ever. There are 4.8 million self-employed Brits and women represent 34% of self- employed workers, up from 27% in 2007.
Instead of being your own boss, the danger is that you become your own secretary, accountant and IT helpdesk, striking off a never-ending to-do list, when you should be thinking tactically about the future.
Where do I want my business or brand to be in five or 10 years’ time? Who do I want to be?
For a director, that might mean taking time away from the stage and rehearsals to read plays crying out for revival.
For an architect, it means not saying yes to every loft conversion to make time to enter competitions for art galleries and bridges. From garden shed to Guggenheim.
It’s scary saying no to work that pays the bills. If I turn down a commission to spend a day in an archive, I make no money. But every time I say yes to a copy-by-teatime commission, my next book falls further away.
I was impressed by the response of one woman – an image consultant to female politicians and ceiling-smashing CEOs – who I contacted about this piece.
She thanked me warmly for thinking of her, said that she had other immediate commitments and wished me luck.
When I canvassed other successful women, they each offered their own keywords for politely side-stepping commitments. They were ‘compressed’ that week, ‘crunched’ for time, ‘prioritising’ other projects.
Juliet Mushens, co-founder of literary agency CaskieMushens, says: ‘The immediacy of the world we live in makes everything feel urgent. I get 400-500 emails every day. People send texts saying: “Have you seen my email?”
When I went on honeymoon recently – the one holiday when you really are allowed to switch off – I was surprised that so much resolved itself while I was away. Of course, there were some outstanding things that needed my attention, but all too often we create a sense of urgency for ourselves.’
Emails can be a distraction from Julie’s real work: reading manuscripts, spotting authors, shaping proposals and signing deals. Natalie calls it ‘senior prefect syndrome’ – a false sense of virtue and efficiency because you’ve cleared your inbox.
Then there’s Twitter and Instagram. Posting photos and updates ‘can make you feel like you’re working, and makes it look like you’re working, but...’ Juliet tells me: ‘It’s easy to come to work, answer emails, have meetings and go home, convinced that we’ve been very productive.
But you need to look at what you have proactively done that will result in something concrete – whether that’s a deal or a new signing. That’s the cornerstone of how I plan my day.’
We forget that thinking is as important as doing. Juliet says that carving out ‘strategic time’ at the beginning of each week or month is ‘priceless’. She also talks of the importance of saying no without guilt.
Some of her most successful writers – she represents Jessie Burton, author of the bestselling The Miniaturist, The Muse and The Restless Girls – receive 20 requests a week: ‘Can they fly here, can they file this piece...?’ Juliet acts as gatekeeper: ‘It’s hard to say no for yourself.’
That’s what I need: a ‘no’ woman, not a ‘yes’ man. I feel guilty about letting editors down. Instead I say yes, then fret and resent. I often set aside ‘book weeks’, but if an editor says: ‘Jump!’, I ask: ‘How many words?’
Natalie protects her time: ‘If I need to do research – I put it in my diary as a meeting. Psychologically, I have to reinforce the time.’
So that’s what I’ve done. This morning my diary says: ‘ELLE piece.’ Tomorrow: ‘IBI.’ Important book idea.
Laura Freeman’s The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite is out now.
This article appears in the June 2019 edition of ELLE UK. Subscribe here to make sure you never miss an issue.
