Priorities, Priorities, Priorities. It is hard not to get overwhelmed on a daily basis.
Several years ago when I worked in a global Tech company, I oversaw thousands of products being shipped each day. Due to the nature of the job, every department would contact me with requests for their customers or items that involved the supply chain and guess what, they all said that their item was a priority. So I quickly learned that if everything is a priority then nothing becomes a priority as everything is now in the same bucket.
I am a strategic planner by profession and by nature and what I find works well for me is to link my output back to my strategic objectives and goals that I want to achieve, which helps me become a lot more productive.
This may be of help to you…
I start off by reviewing my year and my strategic outcomes and then I break it down in quarterly and monthly goals. By doing this, you get to focus on manageable blocks of work which will help you to avoid overwhelm and focus on the tasks at hand.
Before you start to review your top priorities for the week, take a look at your monthly goals, as you should always link your tasks to what you are trying to achieve overall.
Then to map out your priorities for the week, I would recommend:
- List out / write down randomly, all of the items that are on your list. You can use a sheet of paper or use Post IT notes.
- Write beside the list or put the POST ITs in the order of – Urgent, Not Urgent, Important, Not important ( U, NU, I, NI)
- Bucket 1: Quick Wins/Do todayLet’s look at the Urgent & Important first – These are the ones you should tackle first. Differentiating what is really urgent is critical here. If the team or a customer or potential customer requires this urgently and it is important to win work then this should be added to the Quick Wins /DO TODAY – example Call back a sales lead or Give a demo
- Bucket 2: Major Projects/Schedule in If it is a project that is really important and needs to be delivered at a later date then this should be added to the Important but not urgent. “Major Projects/Schedule in” bucket, so you can work on part of it this week to meet the deadline, and schedule in time to get it done – example Planning an event/webinar – live in 3 months
- Bucket 3: Delegateif there are tasks that do not need your expertise to do them, then you should try and delegate them. examples include, booking a room for a meeting, booking flights for a meeting next month etc.
- Bucket 4: Thankless tasks.These are the tasks that do not have any measurable value. An example would be searching the internet for information. A person could take varying times to find the information, with no real value of the task. The task may need to be completed to find this information to get a result in the future, but this task should be scheduled, as its repetitive and could suck up a lot of valuable time. Prioritise this after you have reviewed your full list.
