By Heather Zimar, Managing Editor, Journals and Publications, AACRAO, Live from #AACRAO2026
At a Monday afternoon session, “Prioritize! When Everything is Urgent, Nothing is Urgent!” at the 111th AACRAO Annual Meeting, Doug McKenna, University Registrar at George Mason University, provided practical strategies for better prioritization, organization, and productivity.
He delved first into the science of how people make decisions with insights from psychology, economics, and neuroscience. There are three main types of decision-making, he shared:
Rational: Analytic, time-consuming, and labor-intensive.
Heuristic: Using mental shortcuts to make decisions, which is great for expediency, but it can lead to rash decisions and can introduce biases.
Emotional: Using feelings and emotions rather than logic.
“We all operate between each of the three at different times,” he said. “And which category we find ourselves in depends on different factors.”
The common obstacles to rational decision-making, he noted, are: cognitive overload and too many options.
Frameworks on motivation and procrastination can help.
Motivation, he noted, lies on a spectrum. “Most of the time we experience amotivation or extrinsic motivation,” he said. The keys to encourage intrinsic motivation are: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. “The stronger the sense of the combination of those three elements, the greater the chance for intrinsic motivation,” he said.
McKenna noted that procrastination isn’t always a sign of being unmotivated or lazy. Some causes include: a lack of clarity on what’s important; feeling overwhelmed by the workload; perfectionism or fear of making mistakes; and distractions or multi-tasking.
The foundational work, he said, includes:
Know what’s important.
Communicate. You have to talk to your team about what’s important to you.
Create a real inventory of items that need prioritization.
Empower staff.
Ensure the work is iterative and ongoing.
“I don’t think there’s one way to do this,” he said. “What’s important is that you are open with yourself and your staff.”
McKenna shared the Eisenhower Matrix: Focus on the most important task while reducing distractions from less urgent or unimportant ones. It divides tasks into the following four quadrants:
Urgent and important (reactive in nature).
Important but not urgent (long-term success, strategic, developmental, designed to improve future performance).
Urgent but not important (interruptions, distractions that can be handled by others).
Not urgent and not important. Minimize or eliminate these tasks.
Another way to think about these, he said, is: Do, Plan, Delegate, and Eliminate.
Another method he discussed was the MSCW Method, which categorizes tasks based on importance and urgency:
Must-haves: Critical tasks for achieving your goals.
Should-haves: Can be delayed temporarily.
Could-haves: Nonessential tasks that provide value if completed but are not detrimental if not.
Won’t-haves: Something that can wait.
Consider, he said, “Does anything need to be completed in a sequence?” And review and adjust regularly.
The final method is the Getting Things Done framework. This GTD method works to reduce cognitive load, improve focus, and reduce stress. The core principles are: capture everything, clarify tasks, organize info, review regularly, and engage and execute.
McKenna emphasized the importance of reviewing the process and reprioritizing. “Regular reviews keep priorities real,” he said.
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