Chaos? Try this.

If your office has a revolving door of people who all believe their problem is the most urgent problem, congratulations — you’re a nurse leader.

Here’s a typical Tuesday: you walk in with a plan. Maybe even a list. You’re going to tackle the scheduling gap, return three calls, and finally write that corrective action you’ve been putting off for two weeks. By 9am, someone’s crying in the break room, two CNAs have called out, and there’s a family at the front desk who would like to speak to the manager. Spoiler: you’re the manager.

The chaos is not going away. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that waiting for a calm day to get things done is a fantasy. The calm day is not coming.

So here’s what actually works. Block time in the morning before anyone else arrives — even 45 minutes with no walk-ins, no calls, just you and your actual priorities. It feels aggressive until you realize it’s the only hour of the day you have full control over. Triage instead of just reacting — not everything that feels urgent is actually urgent, and if nobody is dying or getting fired in the next hour, it goes on the list, not the front burner. And stop solving other people’s problems before they’ve had a chance to try. A lot of what ends up on your plate started as someone else’s issue that you fixed before they could. Let them sit with it for a minute. They might surprise you.

The chaos doesn’t stop. But you can stop letting it run the whole show.