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How to Prioritize Work

“what if everything I do is equally important. I cannot choose to make one less important than the other”

By Deladem KumordziePublished about a year ago 7 min read
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How to Prioritize Work
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Learning how to prioritize means getting more out of the limited time you have each day. It’s one of the cornerstones of productivity and once you know how to properly prioritize, it can help with everything from your time management to work-life balance. You might ask, “what if everything I do is equally important. I cannot choose to make one less important than the other”

Well, that is exactly what I’m going to be talking about. Prioritizing work doesn’t mean making some tasks more important and other tasks rot because they were “less important”. The methodologies I am going to use here will allow you to mark every task and work as important, systemize the whole process and make working on different tasks feel like a robust network that yields unbiased results

If this fits right within your dockets, then keep reading. One of the oldest work struggles is knowing how to prioritize your work. With more tasks to do, non-stop emails, and higher expectations, deciding what deserves your attention can quickly become overwhelming. However, mastering prioritization can change your life. Knowing your priorities reduces stress, and helps you focus, and ignore FOMO(Fear of missing out), It can also improve productivity and time management, and even help with work-life balance as you create better boundaries for your workday. So let us delve in.

Master lists

It’s impossible to prioritize your tasks if they are all swimming in your head. Instead, start by getting everything down and organized in a master list. Think of this as a brain dump. You want to get every possible thing that pulls your attention out of your head and into a doc.

Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

Start by making a master list — a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and the future task will be stored.

Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task-oriented” — you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.

The Eisenhower Matrix

Your Master list helps you understand how to prioritize all your tasks. But it can still get complicated when deciding what needs to get done now vs later. There are a few prioritization techniques you can use.

First, there is what’s called the Pareto Principle, or — the 80/20 rule ( most of you are familiar with in various aspects, eg finance ) However in productivity it says, 20% of your efforts tend to produce 80% of your results. This Principle relies on experience and consistency. However, If you find yourself unable to prioritize, especially when working a new job, the Eisenhower matrix can be used. Developed by former US President Dwight Eisenhower, The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:

By Olena Sergienko on Unsplash

Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible

Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it

Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else

Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.

One of the most difficult tasks here is getting urgent but not important tasks off your priority list. This is where Smart delegation comes in.

Delegation starts with finding the right person and explaining the task properly. But it also involves giving the person enough time and guidance to fully get the task off your plate.

The Ivy Lee Method

Sometimes despite our best efforts, we still end up with a massive list of urgent and important tasks we need to get done. In this case, we need to dig deeper and find their true importance. One of the best ways to do this was developed over 100 years ago by a productivity consultant named Ivy Lee. The so-called Ivy Lee Method forces you to prioritize your day by following a simple set of rules:

At the end of each work day, write down the 6 most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than 6 tasks.

Prioritize those 6 items in order of their true importance.

When you arrive the next day, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the next one.

Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

Repeat this process every working day.

Limiting yourself to 6 tasks (or less) every working day forces you to prioritize properly and then stay focused by single-tasking your way through your list.

The ABCDE method

Instead of keeping all tasks on a single level of priority, this method offers two or more levels for each task:

Go through your list and give every task a letter from A to E (A being the highest priority)

For every task that has an A, give it a number that dictates the order you’ll do it in

Repeat until all tasks have letters and numbers.

Again this is a deceptively simple prioritization strategy. while in most cases it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a B1 task and an A3 one. By giving each task multiple layers of prioritization, their true importance suddenly becomes much clearer.

By Dell on Unsplash

Set the tone of the day by “Eating the frog”

Once you’ve prioritized your most important work, it’s time to actually choose how to attack the day. How you start the day sets the tone for the rest of it. And often, getting a large, hairy, yet important task out of the way first thing gives you momentum, inspiration, and energy to keep moving.

As Mark Twain famously wrote: “If you have to eat a live frog, It does not pay to sit and look at it for a very long time!”

Warren Buffett’s 2-list strategy

Cut out “good enough” goals with Warren Buffett’s 2-list strategy.

Write down your top 25 goals: life goals, career goals, education goals, or anything else you want to spend your time on.

Circle your top 5 goals on that list.

Finally, any goal you didn’t circle goes on an “avoid at all cost” list. These are the tasks that are seemingly important enough to deserve your attention. But that isn’t moving you towards your long-term priorities.

The sunk cost fallacy

As you go through these prioritization exercises, it is important to remember to be flexible. No one knows what the future holds. and ultimately, prioritizing and planning are just really guessing.

Sometimes you might prioritize a task only to have expectations or deliverables change on you. At this point, it’s hard not to be disappointed. But you can’t let that skew your judgment.

Humans are especially susceptible to the “sunk cost fallacy” — a psychological effect where we feel compelled to continue doing something just because we’ve already put time and effort into it.

Using the Time Mulplier technique

Prioritization isn’t just about tasks. It’s about time as well. Working on the right tasks can either give you more time in the future or take it away from you. As you learn how to prioritize, be keenly aware of the impact your choices have on your future obligations. The best thing to do is to focus on time multipliers.

Rather than asking “What is the most important thing I can do today?”, Time Multiplier asks: “ What is the most important thing I can do today that would make tomorrow better?” In other words, by thinking about how we use our time today, we can free up hours in the future.

Conclusion

Priorities are great but remember to be realistic about how much work you can actually do each day. This way, you will end up feeling good about the progress you made.

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About the Creator

Deladem Kumordzie

Challenging everything I know, unlearning & relearning⚡️ A rare breed of business and technology. Business Planning || Branding || Front End developer || Graphics || Entrepreneur || Interested in Venture Studios

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