Help! I Need to Prioritize

Last night my head was spinning. I couldn’t wrap my head around all the things I had to do. Clients, workshops, assessment tools, research projects and the list went on. There just didn’t seem to be enough of me to go around. At times like this, we all know that we need to prioritize. But what exactly does this mean?

Wasted Time

In my opinion, most people spend too much time prioritizing. I’d like to share an example of how a client handled his email backlog. He had me a huge stack of emails that he had printed, sorted by sender and alphabetized. He was then planning to flag his top priority emails. All this time and yet not a single email answered.

I would rather see people focus on getting their work done. Perfecting our prioritization is not the goal.

3 Simple Steps

At the same time, we need to have some kind of plan about where to start. I recommend a very simple approach to prioritization:

Step 1: Categorize your work. (See my blog “How to Create the Perfect TO DO List”)

Step 2: Identify your top 1-2 priorities in each category.

Step 3: Block off time for each of your categories. During these times, focus on your top priorities for that category.  I recommend:

  • ~75% of your attention goes to your #1 priority.
  • ~15% of your attention goes to your #2 priority.
  • ~10% of your attention goes to all other work in this category.

When you finish priority #1, the other tasks move up the priority list. And so on, and so on.

Too Busy

Many people complain about being too busy. What they are really saying is that they are not giving enough time to their top priorities. They are spreading themselves too thin.

We can’t get it all done. But we can get some things done really well.

Touch it Once Reminder

Note: These prioritization principles apply to larger chunks of work.

For all tasks that take less than 10 minutes, I still advocate the Touch it Once principle.

How do you manage to balance all of your work?  I’d love to hear more ideas here.