It’s a workday afternoon like any other. You sit at your desk with a cup of coffee and look at the computer — and you’re faced with a decision. You’re managing a new project and your inbox is overflowing with employee questions. A colleague you know is struggling with their own project management tasks knocks on the door. And you need to develop an innovative new progress tracking method to pitch to your boss. What do you do first?
Every day, we're hit with a barrage of tasks - team check-ins, endless emails, and personal commitments. Without a good prioritization strategy, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and out of control.
Learning how to prioritize is a game-changer. It's like having a compass, guiding you through your day with clarity. Mastering this skill helps you achieve work-life balance, produce quality work, and meet deadlines without stress.
Prioritization is your secret weapon for professional growth. It turns daily chaos into a manageable workflow, allowing you to thrive, make impactful decisions, and steer your career in the right direction. Ready to take control? Let's dive into the art of prioritization.
What does it mean to prioritize tasks?
Prioritization is the process of determining the order and importance of tasks, activities, or goals based on their relative significance, urgency, or impact.
Once you know how important and urgent each task is, you can determine what resources you need for each, like time and coworker help, to outline when and how you’ll complete each item.
What are the 4 Ps of prioritization?
The 4 P's of prioritization in time management are essential strategies that help individuals and organizations effectively manage their tasks and time. These principles are:
1. Prioritize
As we mentioned earlier, this involves identifying the most important and urgent tasks that need immediate attention. Effective prioritization allows individuals to focus on what truly matters, ensuring that critical tasks are completed first.
2. Plan
Planning involves organizing tasks and setting clear goals. This can be achieved by creating to-do lists and schedules and breaking down larger projects into manageable steps. Effective planning helps allocate time efficiently, ensuring that all tasks are completed within set deadlines.
3. Prepare
Good preparation ensures that all necessary resources and tools are ready before jumping into tasks. This may involve gathering information, setting up a workspace, or organizing materials needed for a project.
Proper preparation minimizes distractions and helps maintain focus, ultimately saving time and reducing the likelihood of encountering blockers while completing your taks.
4. Perform
The final step is performing the tasks. This requires maintaining focus, managing energy levels, and staying motivated. Techniques such as the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working in focused intervals followed by breaks, can enhance productivity. It's also crucial to remain adaptable and mindful of one’s energy throughout the day, allowing for breaks or task-switching to prevent burnout.
5 prioritization methods to manage your tasks
Humans aren’t natural time managers. While some are more naturally inclined to organize their time, most people must learn how to prioritize tasks to better achieve their goals. That’s comforting since it means you can learn it, too.
Here are five methods for task prioritization.
1. Task agenda
Start simple by outlining your tasks and deadlines in a time management tool, such as a digital calendar, productivity app, or handwritten agenda. You can create separate personal and professional task lists or house everything in the same space to gain a big-picture view of your day, week, or month.
2. Eisenhower matrix
If you struggle to visualize your priorities, try using the Eisenhower Matrix. It's a two-by-two matrix with “Important” and “Not important” on the X-axis and “Urgent” and “Not Urgent” on the Y-axis. Place tasks in their matching quadrant to categorize. Then, decide what you’ll take on, schedule, delegate, and eliminate.
- Urgent and important: Top priority tasks that require immediate action.
- Urgent but not important: Tasks that can be delegated or eliminated.
- Important but not urgent: Tasks that are essential for long-term goals and should be scheduled.
- Neither urgent nor important: Tasks that can be postponed or ignored.
3. ABCDE
This technique involves ranking every task from A–E, with A being most important and E being least. Whether for personal or team tasks, this ranking helps everyone understand expectations and provides a clear roadmap for tackling tasks. And, while this method doesn’t account for urgency, you could consider it when debating how important something is.
4. Eat the frog
“Eating the frog” means doing your most dreaded task first, getting it out of the way so you can focus on other items and kick-start your day feeling productive and accomplished.
The rest of your day also feels easier since you’re not avoiding some daunting and complex task. And you might feel less distracted because you won’t be thinking about the item you know you have to do but don’t want to.
5. Most important task (MIT)
The MIT method involves choosing a couple of tasks each day and week that are most important and giving them your attention. Once you complete them, you free yourself to work on whatever you like in any order. This method is excellent when you don’t have many urgent daily and weekly tasks and also enjoy more flexible work you can do at any time.
11 steps for prioritizing tasks
1. List all tasks
Begin by writing down every task you need to complete. This includes work projects, personal errands, and long-term goals. Be thorough and specific. For example, instead of just "write report," list out "research data for Q3 sales report," "draft outline for report," and "create graphs for presentation."
2. Assess urgency and importance
Evaluate each task based on how soon it needs to be done (urgency) and how crucial it is to your goals (importance). An urgent and important task might be "finish client proposal due tomorrow," while an important but less urgent task could be "update resume for future job search."
3. Consider dependencies
Determine which tasks rely on other tasks being completed first. Create a sequence based on these dependencies. For example, you can't "launch a marketing campaign" before you "finalize product features."
4. Estimate time requirements
Assess how long each task will take. This helps in scheduling and ensures you're not overcommitting. A task like "write monthly report" might take 3 hours, while "attend team standup" takes 15 minutes.
5. Factor in energy levels
Match tasks to your natural energy fluctuations throughout the day. Schedule complex, high-priority tasks for when you're most alert. You might tackle "strategic planning" in the morning and leave "routine data entry" for later in the day.
6. Implement time-boxing
Allocate specific time slots to high-priority tasks. This ensures important work gets done and helps prevent less crucial tasks from expanding to fill available time. You might set aside 9-11 AM for "product development" and 2-3 PM for "answering emails."
7. Consider effort and impact
Estimate the time and resources required for each task, as well as its potential impact. A high-effort, high-impact task might be "develop new marketing strategy," while a low-effort, high-impact task could be "send follow-up emails to key clients."
8. Use a prioritization method
Apply a structured approach like the Eisenhower Matrix. For instance, "prepare for tomorrow's board meeting" would fall into the urgent and important quadrant, while "clean out email inbox" might be urgent but not important.
9. Assign priority levels
Based on your analysis, assign a priority level to each task. You might use a simple system like High, Medium, and Low, or a numerical scale from 1-5. For example, "complete quarterly tax filing" might be a high priority (5), while "organize digital photos" could be a low priority (1).
10. Order tasks accordingly
Arrange your tasks based on their priority levels. Start with the highest priority items at the top of your list. For instance, your ordered list might begin with "1. Finalize project proposal, 2. Schedule team meeting, 3. Review budget spreadsheet," and so on.
11. Review and adjust as needed
Regularly reassess your priorities as circumstances change. New urgent tasks may arise, or the importance of existing tasks may shift. For example, if a client suddenly requests a meeting, you might need to bump "prepare client presentation" to the top of your list, even if it wasn't originally a high priority.
7 tips for prioritizing tasks at work
Task prioritization will look different for you than the next person because everyone organizes their time differently. But here are eleven tips you can use to improve your unique strategy.
1. Figure out your rhythm
You’ve probably heard phrases like “Rise and grind” or “Early bird gets the worm.” Waking early is a common productivity strategy because many people feel less distracted and more energetic in the morning, but this isn’t necessarily the right choice for you. Depending on your body and circadian rhythm, waking too early may even be counterproductive.
Consider when you feel most awake and energized during the day and save high-focus tasks for then. Also try to prioritize a healthy sleep routine, physical exercise, and eating nutritiously to encourage mental focus throughout your day.
2. Keep your eye on the prize
Even the most ordinary and boring tasks typically contribute to important long-term goals. And knowing why you’re doing something might make you feel more focused and motivated to complete it. For example, writing a month’s worth of social posts might feel tedious. But if you remember these posts are part of a larger marketing campaign aimed at increasing the company’s revenue by 5%, you might feel more motivated to finish this task on time.
And remember your own professional goals to give tasks more context and meaning. Perhaps meeting every deadline for a month increases your chance of receiving a promotion or raise. That’s ample reason to work hard and complete everything.
3. Prioritize your development
Your personal development is just as important — and often more motivating — than professional growth. So when evaluating an item’s importance and urgency, also account for how it helps you develop valuable hard and soft skills you want to improve. To strengthen your communication skills, place seemingly unimportant tasks like crafting clear emails, checking in with team members, or prepping talking points ahead of meetings into higher-priority items.
4. Give everything a due date
Every task should have a clear deadline — even if your manager hasn’t assigned one. This helps you prioritize your time and better understand what you must do each day, week, and month to stay on schedule. And putting due dates on action items that aren’t time-sensitive might also motivate you to be more productive and overcome procrastination.
5. Track your time
Track how long it takes you to complete every task to better understand how you should prioritize these item types in the future. If you’re a freelance graphic designer, for example, track how long you spend drafting a contract, performing design revisions, or building a pitch deck. Then, adjust future task prioritization lists and client-forward timelines to reflect this information.
6. Manage distractions
Whether it’s an impatient child or a lit-up phone screen, life will carry you away from your work if you let it, so you must consciously try to avoid distractions. Start by observing yourself throughout your workday to notice what steals your attention — maybe checking personal email or playing a game on your phone. Then, set guidelines to limit these activities. You might lock your phone out for an hour at a time while you focus on work or enable browser settings that restrict how much time you can spend on certain pages.
7. Leverage technology
When it comes to task prioritization, technology is your friend. So many digital productivity tools exist, from task management platforms to messaging platform integrations that notify you of task due dates. You can also find browser and app settings that limit use and time trackers to track time spent and create reports for yourself or your manager.
Common daily routine errors
Understanding common mistakes that hijack your focus is essential to setting up a system that lets you focus on your top priorities. Here are a few common errors:
- Checking your phone immediately: The first thing you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. A negative comment on social media or a stressful message from a friend might steal your energy and distract you from pressing tasks.
- Endless to-do lists: You can only do so much in a day, and an unrealistic to-do list will likely overwhelm you and hinder your ability to get anything done.
- Leaving the biggest challenge for the end of the day: While it may feel satisfying to quickly check off a bunch of small tasks from your to-do list first thing, these items might distract you from higher priority items that require your focus and time.
Prioritize your tasks to improve your routine
Life is hectic and complex, and it’s normal to feel overwhelmed by your daily workload every now and then. But learning how to prioritize your tasks is an excellent first step to combat this overwhelm and feel more in control of your life.
Start by assessing your daily and weekly tasks and trying out prioritization methods until you find one that makes you feel motivated and prepared to take on your work. Then, keep the bigger picture in mind — both regarding personal and professional goals — and enjoy tackling each day calmly and purposefully.
If you want help mapping it all out, connect with a BetterUp Coach. They can help you manage your goals and prioritize what needs to get to to make them happen.
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