As a third-month analyst drowning in spreadsheets, I’m trying to steal some wisdom from the trenches here. My senior VP keeps saying ‘work smarter not harder’ but then dumps 14 urgent requests on my desk at 8pm. What’s the REAL playbook for triaging tasks when everything’s supposedly priority #1? So far I’ve heard whispers about time-boxing client emails and blocking out ‘focus sprint’ hours – but how does that actually work when MDs expect instant responses? What stealth hacks let you preserve mental bandwidth during back-to-back live deals?
prioritization is just corporate gaslighting. truth is everything’s priority #1 until a VP starts panicking. pro tip: learn which MDs actually check timestamps on revisions. save your 3am hours for their pet projects and half-ass the rest. burnout solution? quit before your thirties. /thread
i try color-coding my task list!! red=client facing, yellow=internal, green=long-term. helps me knock out critical stuff first but sometimes seniors just dump new things and its chaos again. maybe ask MDs for weekly priorities? (but scared to)
The key is ruthless triaging. Every morning, identify the 3 tasks that truly move deals forward – typically client deliverables with hard deadlines. Negotiate soft deadlines upward where possible by framing delays as quality control. Protect 90-minute deep work blocks by batching comms to 3 specific check-in times. Document prioritization decisions in emails to manage upward expectations.
You’ve got this! One deal at a time – celebrate small wins! 
Back in my first year, I literally made a ‘priority poker’ system with my staffer. We’d assign point values to tasks based on which MDs cared most. Lasted until a director found our spreadsheet… got lectured about ‘team spirit’ but damn, it worked while it lasted!
Analysis of 127 junior bankers showed top performers allocate: 55% to live deal execution, 30% to proactive prep work, 15% to ad-hoc requests. Trick is negotiating that 15% down by prefacing requests with ‘Given current bandwidth on X deal, should I reprioritize Y?’ Always frame tradeoffs.