Does your to-do list keep getting bigger by the minute, and everything on it appears super urgent?
Welcome to the real world!
Don’t fret. You aren’t alone.
There comes a time when we realize that there isn’t enough time to accomplish everything. And, in as much as every task appears urgent, understand that some can be done later, and nothing will go wrong – at least not horribly wrong.
The only thing that you must do is to upgrade your task prioritization game.
If you are at a point in your life where you feel like you are drowning in tasks, you’ve come to the right place. Read on as we are about to share some easy-to-do techniques which you can use to prioritize tasks that matter.
The Eisenhower Matrix
According to Mark Raffan, a top business and career coach at the Forbes Coaches Council, a business must become ruthless when it comes to prioritization. He notes that the Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Eisenhower Box, has been the most productive prioritization tool for him.
This is a relatively simple productivity strategy, decision-making, or organization tool that you can use to separate your actions based on four possibilities.
On a four-box matrix, the Y-axis boxes are labeled as ‘unimportant’ and ‘important’, and the X-axis boxes are marked as ‘not urgent’ and ‘urgent’. With this tool, you can easily determine the importance and urgency of the tasks at hand.
The MIT Technique
The use of the Most Important Task (MIT) method has helped a lot of people to avoid getting overwhelmed at work, with family issues, and in other aspects of life.
Josh Kaufman, the Personal MBA, defines MIT as a critical task with the potential to generate the most significant outcomes. Kaufman advises MIT adherents to come up with a list of two or three Most Important Tasks and then focus on handling them to completion as soon as possible.
The MITs list should be distinct from your usual to-do list. You will feel proud of yourself and more productive than ever for having finished the Most Important Tasks. For the majority of people, completing these tasks is a definition of success for that day.
Delegation
Yes! You read that right! Delegation is a useful tool for prioritizing. It has become almost a norm for people to handle tasks with very short deadlines, instead of focusing on what is more important with less demanding deadlines.
You must become aware of the fact that you can also delegate your urgent tasks. By learning how to prioritize, some of the most successful entrepreneurs have realized that they cannot prioritize projects based solely on time sensitivity.
They have experienced the benefits of concentrating on things that turn around situations in significant ways.
Do not worry if you have difficulties delegating urgent things such as customer service in the beginning. While it will take you some time before you become comfortable trusting your employees, you will eventually get used to it.
Delegating will help you shift your focus to large-scale business issues such as product improvement and development of new growth strategies. With time, you will look back and realize that it is one of the best decisions you’ve made in your business.
ABCDE
The ABCDE technique requires the user to begin by placing each task on their list into a category as follows:
This method will come in handy when choosing tasks to delegate and eliminate, writes Brian Tracy, author of Eat That Frog. Tracy, a time management expert, offers advice on the importance of giving the most significant and most urgent project top priority.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all task prioritization technique. Whatever you choose in the end should be based on your company goals and availability of other factors such as people to delegate tasks to.
Also, you don’t have to select a single technique. You can blend distinct elements of the different methods until you get what works for you most naturally.
Do you have a technique that has worked for you? Share it with our community in the comment section below.
