How to Set Priorities and Get Things Done

Remember the game, Pick-Up Sticks? You had a pile of sticks on the floor and the goal was to pick one up without disturbing the others. Or for those of you born in the last few hundred years, how about Jenga? Remove a single block from a towering stack without crashing the entire thing to the floor.

We must have played those games a lot when we were kids because that’s how many of us decide what to do next. And, while I can understand the desire not to upset the pile of sticks or tower of blocks, it’s sort of random, isn’t it? What can I do next that won’t cause a problem or piss someone off? Sometimes it’s the safe route, but not the most productive one. To be productive, set priorities and follow them.

Make a list

Before you can set priorities, understand what you have to do. I have been using some sort of a to-do list since the ’80s with the old DayTimer system. I can’t imagine not having one. But I know many people that don’t. On any day, they don’t know what they should work on, much less when.

So, the first thing you have to do is make lists. Create one master list. You can use paper, a computer program, or whatever task management software you are already using. This is the one list that rules them all. Everything that you need to do goes on the list. Everything that pops into your head at any point goes on the list. At the end of each day, or first thing in the morning, you pluck things for the list that will get done that day.

You can use the same priority matrix we will discuss in a moment, but mostly, you know what needs to be on today’s list. Each time you review the list, look down at the bottom. Look at those things that have been lying there for days or weeks and never making the list. Most likely, they don’t need to get done, so delete them. If they do pick one once a week to add to your daily list. Just to get it done.

The Eisenhower Matrix

Now, you have a list of things to do today, but which one gets done first? But wait! Before we start on priorities, I want you to do one more thing. Besides everything on the list, I want you to write a rough estimate of how long each thing will take. This will help with the organization of your list and determine if you already have too much to do. We will circle back to these time estimates in a bit, but now, let’s get things in order.

On a clean sheet, write the following headers:

• Urgent and Important
• Urgent and not important
• Not urgent, but important
• Neither urgent nor important

They call this the Eisenhower Matrix. You can Google it to learn the history. Normally, it’s a matrix with Urgent and Not Urgent across the top and Important and Not Important down the side. But I find it easier to just make four lists. You do you.

Now, look at each task and put it on one list. Do some soul searching on this one. Is it really important or do you just want to do it? Is it really urgent? What would happen if you didn’t get to it? In the beginning, this operation will take some time, but as you get more practice, it will become intuitive.

Now you have the order of your tasks. The exact order of the middle two categories can be a gray area, but you get the idea.

In a perfect world, you would now take the thing off the top of the list, do it, then move on to the next one. But the world doesn’t work that way. All day, every day, additional things pop into our lives. The trick is to learn to quickly assess each thing and determine where in our original matrix it fits. Or does it simply go on the master list to look at later?

Making it work

Sometimes, you don’t get to decide the importance or urgency. Like if you have a job. With a boss. Deal with it. If the boss comes in and tells you he needs you to get on some mundane task with no urgency or importance, what do you do? Probably, you just do it. Then get back to your list. Don’t let it derail the whole train.

Also, mold the tasks around your schedule and lifestyle. There are certain things I like to do first thing in the morning. For me, first thing is very early. The things I choose to do them may not be the most important, but they certainly aren’t the least. Mostly, they are things that deserve focus harder to achieve later in the day. They also may be things that require a long time to accomplish. If I can knock out a top priority item that takes two hours to complete and finish it before breakfast, that’s a win. And don’t forget to schedule exercise or at least daily walks.

Using time

So, let’s get back to those time estimates. First, add them up and see how they fit into your day. Is your day eight hours, ten hours, twelve? You can’t alter time. And you probably can’t change how long tasks take. That’s why I wanted you to do the time estimates first. So you can make an honest estimate of time without thinking about whether or not it fit your day.

Now, let’s say, you have a ten-hour day. You want to end up with a list that totals ten hours, right? Wrong. What about lunch? What about breaks? I want you to schedule breaks. I take a 1-minute break every twenty minutes. You can read about that in the story below. I also break my day into two to three-hour chunks and I make sure the total of tasks is 20–30% less than the time block. When you finish something, take a break, Celebrate. Walk around. A five-minute walk is very refreshing and gets you ready for the next thing.

Now, your eight-hour day has six hours of stuff on it. Anything on the list beyond that goes back on the master. It will not get done today. If it falls into the not urgent or important category, it doesn’t matter, does it? Maybe tomorrow, it becomes more urgent or more important.

One last thing on the time estimates. Working on a task without interruption can be valuable. Getting started takes time. Stopping in the middle and starting again is a time suck. So, try to avoid interruptions when you can. Let’s say you have a meeting to attend in a half hour. Or it’s fifteen minutes until lunchtime. Go down your list and pick something you can complete in that amount of time. You not only get something off your list, but you can work the next priority item without interruption.

Being productive is not just about being busy. It’s about doing the next right thing at any point. Setting priorities will allow you to identify that thing and do it next. Plus, you don’t have to remember a hundred things you need to be doing, only the next one.

Set priorities and get things done.

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