Okay, Katie. Quick, rapid fire. What do you think about when you think about black stories?

Toni Morrison. Long novels. Zines. Very complex stories. Movie night with popcorn.

Lineage and history. BT awards. Hood motifs. I'm reliable narrators. So it's hard to condense

narrative that's so big into such a small space. But that's why we have the podcast. I'm Katie.

And I'm Eves. And on on theme, we tell stories about black stories.

Listen to own theme on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the new corner office. The podcast where we share strategies

for thriving in the new world of work, where location and hours are more flexible than in the past.

Today's tip is to schedule proactive time or pro time for short. This is time dedicated to tasks

that as Stephen Covey would say are important but not urgent. Actually putting this time into your

daily schedule vastly increases the chances that you put first things first.

The term pro time comes from a Harvard Business Review article by Charlotte Blank,

Laura Girge, Laurel Newman, and Ashley Willens called getting your team to do more than meet deadlines.

As the title suggests, most of us know how easy it is to spend all our time on urgent tasks.

When an assignment has a deadline, it always cuts to the front of the line.

We do what's urgent because it demands our attention right now.

Unfortunately, though, this can mean we rarely get to the tasks that are important but that don't

have a specific deadline. Think researching new clients or writing a white paper to build your

expertise or thinking through an employee's career development. Important tasks are even more likely

to get deferred if they are hard. Urgent tasks offer a quick, easy win. We love crossing these things

off and then feeling productive even if in the grand scheme of things we aren't.

The Harvard Business Review article describes the author's research about a strategy to help

...