Whose Monkey Is It?

After university I ran into a familiar problem: there was never enough time. It came to a head when I joined top management. My entire day was swallowed by ‘things to do’. They flew at me from every direction — my staff, the regulator, my family… In the end, instead of doing what was important, I was fighting fires: doing whatever was urgent. Hello stress, hello dissatisfaction with myself.

But it turned out there was an elegant solution. Let me share it.

Imagine that every task is a monkey (like these handsome fellows in the photograph, who send you their greetings from Sri Lanka). The moment you accept a task, a monkey jumps onto your shoulder. And here comes the next one, clinging to your leg… Monkeys need attention, or they begin to waste away — and to smell — wherever you left them: in the office, in a cupboard, in your bed.

There are three simple rules.

1. Whenever you take on a new task, feel the new monkey settle on you. The image is very easy to picture, and soon you will spot monkeys poised to jump from a mile off.
2. If someone brings you a monkey, make things clear at once. Ask: ‘Whose monkey is this?’ Then give it some time in its owner’s presence — and hand it back. A monkey must live on its owner’s shoulder. That is the rule.
3. If it really is your monkey, deal with it now. Do not put it off. Looking an old monkey in the face, trying to remember its name and feeding it all over again takes far too much energy.

Now you have time to look after your own monkeys — the ones that truly matter.

I picked up this trick from ‘Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?’ by William Oncken Jr and Donald L. Wass, published in the Harvard Business Review in 1974. It is still taught on MBA programmes around the world. I hope you find it as useful as I did.

Everyone has the right to a world free of other people’s monkeys!