Is there anyone more overwhelmed with a demanding list of complex daily tasks than today's fire chief? Now subtract from that list the staff necessary to get the tasks done and you have today's volunteer or combination fire chief. Is it any wonder that today's fire chief finds himself fancying the life in Don Quixote tilting at windmills?

Miguel de Cervantes' 1604 work features a 50-year-old man from the Spanish region of La Mancha. Influenced by legends of chivalry, the hero one day declares to his less-than-amused family that he has changed his name to Don Quixote. Further, he intends to mount his noble steed Rocinante and, accompanied by his squire Sancho, venture forth to do great deeds and right all wrongs. Armed with his trusty lance, the pair soon encounters windmills that the character misinterprets as giants.

And so goes this enduring work of fiction — except for many it's not fiction at all. Most fire chiefs face an ever-increasing demand for service with ever-decreasing financial and human resources. They can be overwhelmed by telephone calls, e-mails, requests for time, members whining, disgruntled employees and maybe even the occasional customer complaint.

To deal with these expanding demands, it often becomes necessary to arrive at the office earlier and leave later. Those fringe times are productive because no one knows the chief is in the office, but inevitably colleagues discover that secret and the vicious cycle intensifies. Ultimately, there are only 24 hours in any given day and, if change does not occur, the chief's windmills continue to multiply.

But time complaints are moot. “Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein,” said H. Jackson Brown, author of Life's Little Instruction Book. So what's a fire chief to do?

In a word, prioritize. Learn to choose battles wisely, commit to organizing each day, become skilled at making lists, become aware of modular time frames and, most of all, quit tilting at every spinning windmill. Developing good prioritization skills and effectively applying them each and every day can lead to personal fulfillment and professional achievement.

When creating that life blueprint, begin with the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of your typical activities contribute less than 20% to the value of your work. Therefore, if you do only the most important 20% of your tasks, you still realize most of the value. If you learn to focus most of your time and effort on top-value responsibilities, you will become more productive and your day more fulfilling.

Prioritizing is making choices of how — and how not — to use time. This requires an ability to recognize what is important and understand the difference between urgent and important. The important (priority) tasks most often help realize long-term goals and result in significant achievements. Many daily chores might seem equally urgent and equally important, but with closer scrutiny, don't really contribute to significant big-picture projects.

There are several simple methods to improve efficiency, and chiefs either can pick one and master it or choose several and create a personalized hybrid system. Some effective prioritizers use piles on their desks as a guide. Even in this electronic age, projects create paper. Multiple papers on the same project create bundles, multiple projects create multiple bundles and, unfortunately, not all projects can be brought to successful conclusion in a single day.

For those important projects that seem to take on lives of their own, create priority piles. From left to right, stack A represents the most important and stack B features high-value, but not critical, projects. Stack C features projects in a waning phase or, if possible, ones better left delegated and awaiting follow-up results. Projects in the A pile are must dos. They demand thought, time and effort. If they can't be completed in one sitting, devote some time to them each day until they are complete or at a stage where they can be downgraded to a lower-priority pile.

Successful prioritizers intuitively understand the value of each project in their A stack and devote appropriate time to each according to value produced as they are completed. They ignore how tough or daunting the task might be and focus on completion as quickly as possible. These projects are best done early in the day while energy levels are high and the exhilaration of completion can set a positive tone for tackling even more A projects as the day wears on. If not done early, they have a tendency to weigh heavily and can become an impediment or distraction.

Often there are objectionable or distasteful tasks on the A list. Dwelling on customer complaints, employee discipline, aberrant behavior modification, personnel termination or even communicating some adverse news can be energy draining. Get those issues out of the way early in the day. Doing so relieves immense burdens and makes the balance of the day seem easier. Ignoring or procrastinating weighs greatly on your thought processes and drags you down.

Need to call or moderate a meeting that will cause trouble? The tendency is to ignore the issue and hope it will simply go away, but experience shows difficult issues rarely self-resolve. Again, hold the meeting as early in the day as possible. Plan the agenda well and ensure the purpose is well defined and goals and objectives are clearly stated. Publish or print the agenda and keep the meeting on track.

Appoint one attendee to record comments, task assignments and assigned time frames. As the moderator, ensure participants remain on subject and within time limits. When a conversation strays into superfluous territory, refocus the conversation. When the meeting approaches conclusion, summarize results and recap assigned tasks with emphasis on a deadline. Depending on task complexity, due dates should be within 24 to 72 hours. Make certain attendees understand that if tasks aren't completed within the assigned time frame, their responsibility will be the subject of a follow-up meeting. Maintain and enforce accountability and prioritization will become contagious.

To help reach your organizational goals, time is one of the most important tools in the toolbox. To use time effectively, it might require some retraining, determination and practice. There is really no such thing as time management. Time passes at the same rate no matter what. Using time effectively is really a matter of self-discipline.

One outstanding method to effectively use time is to create a list of projects in the order of their importance. As with the piles on a desk, assign importance to the tasks on your list. Those with highest importance should be listed under column one. Those that can wait should fall into column two and those that qualify as nice to get done but suffer little consequence if not immediately completed can be assigned to column three.

Work to develop skills in using time effectively. Most high achievers divide their day into controllable blocks of time. Normal workdays are split by a midday meal break, usually after four hours of work. Each four-hour block is then book-ended by a 10- or 15-minute rest break. When making lists, try not to permit individual tasks to exceed a convenient time block. As you gain familiarity with pace and self-discipline, you will develop a sense of comfort with how long a given task should take.

When you have identified the length of your comfortable time block, zealously protect it. Regardless of project importance, try not to permit it to exceed the limits of your time block. Productivity and efficiency levels decline proportionately to the time a project exceeds that comfortable block. Take that coffee or meal break, reset your body's clock and then resume work. You will probably notice an immediate benefit to efficiency.

Goal-setting is the skill of deciding what is to be accomplished at the conclusion of a specific time period. Goal-setting provides direction to the morning, afternoon or entire day. Goals should be very specific with a definable objective. Goals are merely wishes until placed in writing, so learn to commit them to your list. Finally, keep goals as realistic as possible. To do anything else on a continual basis will only encourage frustration and ensure frequent failures.

Set clear standards based on personal expectations but keep in mind that standards can and should change as circumstances do. You are the best judge of how, when and why standards should shift. Perfection is almost always unobtainable. By definition, perfectionists maintain very high and very rigid standards. They often experience difficulty adjusting to changing demands or circumstances. Most often, fixating on perfection is counterproductive to effective use of time. It's most always acceptable to adjust or shift standards to changing demands or circumstances. Developing the ability to recognize when or how to shift standards can facilitate effective time use and dramatically increase productivity.

Perfectionism also can lead to procrastination. Learning to recognize procrastination is a skill itself, and one that many have difficulty with because procrastinators are experienced at hiding their procrastination from themselves. Many disguise procrastination with excuses like “I am awaiting inspiration” or “I require a large block of time in order to devote full and complete attention to the project.” Sometimes the excuse is a “need for more information.” It often takes expertise and experience to differentiate between procrastination excuses and legitimate reasons for delaying action or decision-making. Without that ability, effective use of time becomes impossible.

Simple strategies to effectively use time include assuming ownership of time, prioritizing, learning to say no, protecting convenient blocks of time, delegating when possible, breaking large projects into manageable portions, avoiding procrastination and, above all, not chasing every windmill that turns.

The character of Don Quixote is a great literary achievement, a figure whom different eras and different groups have variously interpreted as a buffoon, a tragic hero and a courageous figure refusing to conform. While those qualities might have made Cervantes' protagonist a timeless character, they might not be ideal for today's fire chief or chief officer.

Demands on a fire chief's time are great, and tasks often build up faster than previous projects can be completed. Those piles on the desk seem to grow unabated. You might not be able to expand staffing or increase budgets. You certainly can't increase the number of hours in a day or the number of days in a week. The answer to your effectiveness lies in efficient use of time through prioritization.

The Quixotes of this age do battle with their own windmills through highly developed skills and creative use of time. In Malcolm S. Forbes' astute words, “One worthwhile task carried to conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.”

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Jim Wilson is fire chief of Mariposa County (Calif.) Fire Department and a 36-year veteran of the volunteer and combination fire service. He has founded two successful business ventures including a book publishing company specializing in America's national parks and approaches fire service issues with an entrepreneurial outlook. Wilson is also a graduate of National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer Program and is on the board of directors of International Association of Fire Chiefs' Volunteer and Combination Officers Section.