Time Management Part 3 of 8 – Prioritization Tips

The goal of the series is to help you effectively prioritize and adopt consistent time management strategies. I will expand on these strategies but they include:

• Learning to reconcile time management with that of your personal or professional environment;
• Identifying your strengths and weaknesses and build a time management strategy adapted to your personality;
• Optimizing time and energy management;
• Maintaining and increase your credibility and control in managing demands and priorities.

Today’s episode is specifically about prioritization. We have many responsibilities calling our attention on any given week or month. Learning to prioritize these responsibilities is key, and there are many methods that will help us do just that.

My goal is to show you how you can effectively establish your priorities and stick to them over time.

Prioritization is personal

I read a Linkedin article by Michele Romanow (the co-founder and former CEO of Clearco) where she explained how she applies “value-based prioritization” which helps her establish a personal list of things she doesn’t do.

Keyword: PERSONAL.

Going back to the episode about vision and fruition:

1. You don’t have the same vision as the next person or your acquaintances so you won’t have the same priorities;
2. Not everyone will understand your motivations but you have to stand your ground and learn to not only say “no” but to also own your “nos”;
3. Your vision will make your life, your choices and your decisions gradually simpler and clearer because it will drive you to eliminate or de-prioritize what does not serve it.

Before we move on to anything else, you have to accept these 3 statements as facts.

Now….let’s get started!

What does “Prioritizing” mean?

• It’s about reflecting and analyzing the things that you do or have to do, alone or with other people, against the way that these things influence your reality, your schedule, your perception, your relationships (both personal and professional), your business or projects, and so on.
• You have to be clear on your reasons for prioritizing one thing over another because these reasons will be challenged, sometimes constantly, by your environment. You will need a strong belief in them in order to hold on to them tightly.
• Others, hopefully people who you trust and respect OR people you report to or who report to you, can also help you to refine your prioritization. They may see consequences or impacts you don’t.

There are a few questions to consider when prioritizing :

• Do you systematically prioritize requests from your bosses at work? Or from people you have tremendous respect for?
• Do you systematically prioritize requests from people you like?
• Can you identify people, in your professional and personal lives, to whom you should not say “no” without providing a solution or an alternative?
• Can you pinpoint people who have an impact at your organization or in your life ? They don’t necessarily need to have formal power to yield influence on you.

These questions go back to your ability to distinguish between what is important and what is urgent.

The Eisenhower Matrix

“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

Eisenhower

There is a great article on Mind Tools that elaborates on that:

• An activity is urgent when it has a short time frame for completion.
  • You want to ask: what is the date or time limit for completing it?
• An activity is important because of its weight, it has major consequences for the company you work for or on the results of a project.
  • You want to ask: what is the consequence if I don’t do it or can’t complete it?

→ Typically what is urgent needs to be done rapidly and what is important needs to be part of your daily planning.

From that distinction, you can categorize activities into 4 groups, in decreasing priority:

1. What’s important AND urgent → control crisis and risk mitigation
2. What’s important BUT not urgent → increase core/principal activities
3. What’s not important BUT urgent → reduce secondary activities
4. What’s not important AND not urgent → eliminate unnecessary activities

Honestly, passing every project and activity through these questions has become a daily habit for me over the years. I also do it when I am overwhelmed by what I feel I HAVE to do and I need to clear the fog.

Your priorities will get challenged every day

To not panic at these attacks and feel like our beautiful list of priorities is being disrespected, or worse trampled on, let’s meditate on the famous Pareto principle. The 80/20 rule.

What is the Pareto principle?

It has been said and it has been proven in many situations that 20% of the causes generate 80% of the effects, or along the same lines that 20% of the variables influence 80% of the results and so on.

In priorities and time management, it means that it is important to identify, among a great number of tasks or activities, the ones we should tackle first and separate them from the ones we should postpone or eliminate when possible.

• Prevent or eliminate unnecessary tasks that eat away your time without yielding convincing results
• Carefully select tasks that strongly support future returns.
• Efforts should be focused on high-value or value-added tasks.

TL;DR – Prioritization Tips in Time Management

1. Prioritize based on impact: value, consequences and results
2. Distinguish urgency from importance
3. Remember 20% of what you do yield 80% of the results you see. Hone that 20% the best you can.