Bruce Keener’s Lifestream

2) Reduce those activities that, despite being important, must be performed under pressure.

These activities, by definition, must be performed at the highest level. Yet the time pressure — the urgency — has a negative impact on the quality of the outcome.

Teresa Amabile's research clearly demonstrates how pressure over time is not food for creativity at all — a necessary quality to perform high-impact activities in a great way. Creative ideas need some sort of incubation period which allows them to emerge. Oftentimes, pressure over time (especially if accompanied by frequent distractions) negatively influences such process of internalization and creation of new solutions.

A successful leader reduces "urgent and important" activities to a minimum, by monitoring:

1. How tasks are planned and delegated.
2. How "urgent and important" activities can be reduced.
3. How much free-of-distraction time people have for high-impact activities.

A very interesting article. I've quoted the piece that I found most interesting, and must say that it conforms to what I've observed over the years, even if I didn't grasp it at the time. Thanks to Tyler Ellis for putting this out on his shared Google Reader items list.