Let’s be honest. If you work in events, you’ve almost certainly uttered the phrase “there aren’t enough hours in the day” – probably while simultaneously answering emails, updating a run-of-show and explaining to a venue that no, the AV setup can’t happen “sometime in the morning.”
Good news: you don’t need more hours. You need better use of your time.
The 80/20 Rule (Or: Stop Being Busy, Start Being Effective)
Vilfredo Pareto, a 19th-century Italian economist, noticed that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts. He was talking about land ownership, but event professionals have been quietly living this principle for years… they just didn’t know it had a name.
The question isn’t how much you’re doing. It’s whether you’re doing the right things. And that distinction matters enormously when budgets are tightening, teams are leaner and stakeholders’ expectations have somehow only gone upward.
Enter: The Eisenhower Matrix (Dwight Would Be Proud)
President Eisenhower – a man who had, one might argue, quite a lot on his plate – developed a deceptively simple framework for prioritisation. It splits tasks into four quadrants:
Do: urgent and important. Do it now. A keynote speaker just cancelled… two days before event day. Handle it immediately.
Decide: important but not urgent. Schedule it. Your post-event report can wait until Thursday.
Delegate: urgent but not that important. Who else can handle this? Think about other people with available or automation tools.
Delete: neither urgent nor important. Let it go. It’s fine, really – no one will die.
For event teams juggling dozens of competing demands, this matrix is a revelation. Not everything deserves your attention right now. In fact, most things don’t. Ruthless prioritisation isn’t lazy, it’s professional and your boss, your team as well as your clients and suppliers will thank you for it.
Agile: Not Just for Tech Bros
You may have heard “agile methodology” and pictured a room full of developers arguing about sprints. Fair. But agile thinking – breaking work into focused phases, building in feedback loops, staying flexible – translates beautifully to event delivery.
Rather than trying to plan everything perfectly twelve months out and then white-knuckling it to delivery day, agile teams work in shorter cycles. They check in. They adapt. They don’t catastrophise when something changes, because change is expected and the process accommodates it.
For associations and event organisers dealing with ever-shifting delegate numbers, last-minute speaker cancellations and the eternal question of “can we add a hybrid option?” Agile thinking isn’t just useful. It’s survival!
AI: Your New (Non-Complaining) Team Member
“AI won’t take your job,” as the saying goes, “but someone using AI will.”
AI-powered tools are reshaping how event teams work, from note-takers that transcribe and summarise meetings automatically, to task management platforms that keep projects on track, to chatbots that handle delegate FAQs at 2am so your team doesn’t have to. Automation apps can stitch your tools together so that a registration triggers a welcome email, a calendar invite and a Slack notification without a single human pressing a button.
None of this replaces the relationships, creativity and judgement that make great events happen. But it absolutely frees up time for those things, which is rather the point.
The Bottom Line
Pressure plus efficiency doesn’t have to equal burnout. It can equal something better: a team that’s focused, resilient and actually enjoys their work.
As the saying goes: it’s better to do the right things wrong than to do the wrong things right. Pick your battles. Use your matrix. Embrace a bit of agile thinking. Let the robots handle the admin.
Your future self (the one who actually left the office before 8pm) will be very grateful.
Johnny D. Martinez is Head of Partnerships at CrowdComms and immediate past Chair of the Events Industry Council’s APEX Commission. He presented this session at ABPCO Festival of Learning 2026.