How to Prioritize Your Tasks Each Day
When I was a university student, I had a housemate who was working full-time for a faith-based charity. There was no space for him at the charity’s offices, so he worked from our house most mornings before he had to leave to attend meetings. He would spend the first 30 minutes of each day planning. I could never figure out what would require such intricate planning each day, and 30 minutes seemed excessive.
Years later when I was in a job role which required attention to many disparate things on a given day, I learned about the power of planning. I have had this habit now for over 40 years, and it has served me extremely well, with benefits that have improved the quality of my work and boosted my career, including:
- Reliably getting the important tasks accomplished, both urgent and non-urgent
- Being able to answer the question, "when will that be done?" with confidence
- Focusing on the task I'm performing without concern about other tasks coming after
- Increasing my productivity
- Allowing me to be aware of and take advantage of how I work best
Most of us are familiar with the matrix of important vs urgent, sometimes called the Eisenhower Matrix:
The popular wisdom is to do the things in Quadrant 1 (important + urgent) first, then the tasks in Quadrant 2 (important, non-urgent) next. Delegate items in Quadrant 3 (urgent but not important) and delete things in Quadrant 4 because they’re not worth doing.
But I don’t agree with this popular wisdom. In fact, I strongly disagree.
Such an approach means that you might never get to anything beyond Quadrant 1 if important & urgent tasks continue to flow in all day long. I strongly recommend that you take into account how you operate best in order to know how to prioritize your tasks. Some examples from my own experience:
- I need to prepare my twice-per-year presentation on our product roadmap and strategy. This usually takes me a few weeks, nibbling away at it each day. This is an important, but non-urgent task, at least initially. But I cannot let days go by without nibbling at this task or I'll run out of time and it will become very urgent. So this is one task where I need to consistently spend 30 minutes a day over a period of time.
- I need to write a blog post but my writing is better in the morning when I'm more fresh.
- There's urgent and there's "urgent". One way I prioritize within the important + urgent category is by asking, "will I die or be fired if this task is not completed today?" If the answer is yes, I do it first, unless it's a long task, in which case I might do a couple of short ones before i take on this long important + urgent one.
I know myself and how I work best. I need to get a couple of small things done before I tackle a big one, because I need that sense of accomplishment to help me get through the big one. (Like making one’s bed first thing in the morning.) I also need to be sure any deep writing is done in the morning. Analysis should be done prior to 3:30 pm.
So I take my to-do list and sort it every morning into the order in which I will actually perform the tasks. I use a software product that allows me to easily move things around the list and when I’m done planning for the day, I literally have a to-do list in order of execution. I no longer have to worry about what’s on the list beyond the item I’m currently doing. Yes, things change during the day because of new items that arise, but I can easily plug those into the sorted list in the place where they belong. Every now and then I have to stop what I’m doing and put something ahead of it and change gears, but I know I’ll get back to the task I was just working on when I finish the task that is interrupting it.
I also put a couple of small tasks in after a big one, just so I can re-charge for the next big task.
My boss knows that I’ll get the important things done reliably. When people come asking when something will be done, I can answer with confidence, including sometimes having to say “it’ll be day after tomorrow, because I am working on more critical things between now and then.”
This approach also makes my day much more productive. Not only can I focus on the task at hand but I am faster at getting it done because I’m not distracted wondering if I’m forgetting something important.
And it takes into account how I work at different times of the day and how I need to mix short and long tasks.
I recommend that you select an app that allows you to move things up and down the list based on your own criteria, not the software’s, such as urgency and age. Even just a plain-old Word document can be used! The actual technology isn’t important. The habit is.
A word about big tasks: I must break large tasks down into small, measurable chunks. It’s how I work best. It’s akin to taking on a large task such as painting the exterior of my house. I have to break that project down into smaller chunks (paint the trim around the windows, then paint the 2nd story, then the 1st story, then go to the next side and repeat) or I’ll be intimidated by the scale of the task and procrastinate starting it.
My team knows that I begin my day with my office door closed to get through my planning with as few interruptions as possible. I’m not just being anti-social. When I emerge, I’m better positioned to handle anything that comes my way because I’m clear about the day’s priorities.