Time Management, Prioritize Your Plan, Then Take Action On The Most Important Task First!
It seems like such a simple solution but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t prioritize well. There are many different ways you can learn to work out the order of your tasks. The trick is to find the method that fits you and your personal style best.
The following examples work with most people. Before you can decide what is most important, consider what it is that you want to most achieve. You can’t prioritize if you don’t know what your big picture is!
So first you need to work out where you are headed, and what you are meant to be doing. Set your goals first. Doing this helps you understand what your key focus should be, and this in itself can make working out your priority tasks a far simpler exercise.
Work out a basic breakdown of how your time should be allocated. Some tasks can take up a lot of our time but are really not important in the larger scheme of things. Doing these tasks first prevents us from using that time for tasks that fit in better with our key goals.
.
Once you’ve worked out what it is that you need to focus on, you can work out how you are going to prioritize. You can either do this for everything today and now, or you can create a plan that takes you across your planning form a weekly, to a monthly or even yearly plan.
It’s very simple. All you really need to do is to work out the details:
1. What you need to get done ASAP. These are those urgent important tasks that you really can’t put off. They might be in response to someone else (such as preparing for a meeting, making a call or replying to an email) or they may be tasks you are initiating yourself proactively (Such as training a new staff member or meeting with a client.)
2. Important tasks that need to be scheduled in and absolutely have to be done. These may not be quick jobs but are important and have a deadline attached to them or directly relate to your larger goal.
It might include writing a book or report, creating a training program or developing an overall organization system or some related idea. These tasks take longer than the others so will need chunks of time allocated to them, rather than trying to work on them when you have time.
3. Later tasks. This list is for all the other things you need to do that are not so urgent or important. For example you might want to design a logo or spend time brainstorming. This might be the time you want to put aside for filing or “busy” work.
Once you’ve made your lists, take a look at them again. Place a tick next to the jobs you enjoy and like doing, and an ‘x’ next to the ones you try to avoid, and don’t enjoy. Important tasks need to be addressed and scheduled no matter what.
There are always going to be tasks you don’t want to do floating around. The best way to deal with them is to first admit that you don’t want to do them! And . . . then do them!
The trick is to do the important jobs that you don’t like doing first. You can reward yourself once you have completed them with a small break for a walk or a coffee.
Alternatively set yourself a timer and race yourself to see if you can get those tasks accomplished within the time frame you allocated. Make a game of it.
Be careful that you haven’t slipped a non urgent task into your urgent pile simply because it’s a personal favorite. This is easier said than done as we all want to spend the day on tasks we enjoy- even if these tasks may not be the most urgent.
These tasks will actually work best as rewards for all the other tasks you have to do, so use them to your best advantage.
Planning your work is important, but prioritizing what to do first is critical. Productivity skyrockets when you do the right thimg first. If you run out of time, better it be an unimportant task that is not completed rather than a critically important task.