A Path For Focused Priority Management
A Path For Focused Priority Management
Priority management is a lifelong skill that most people would say they are always working on. Use this guide to coach yourself into developing better habits or use it as a tool with your employees to help them manage priorities.
Getting all your to-do lists out of your head so you can see them is the key to controlling your priorities. You also can’t prioritize what is most important unless you have established goals to work toward. You can get started on building a schedule and doing a brain dump without clear goals, but it will quickly become clear that you can only go so far. Here’s how to get started.
1. Do A Brain Dump
Start off with a blank page and do a brain dump. Get everything you want or need to do out of your head and onto the page. If you prefer a digital medium, you can type it out too, but there is a lot less potential distraction with paper and pen.
Pro tip: Most people can’t effectively brain dump in their normal work environment. Go somewhere out of your normal routine and plan to be unreachable for 60-90 minutes.
2. Categorize Your Tasks
Once you have done a brain dump, use the Eisenhower Matrix to categorize each thing you have on your paper. Spend the time to think about how important and how urgent each item is to your overall goals. Divide your paper into quadrants and classify the top left quadrant “A,” the top right quadrant “B,” the bottom left “C” and the bottom right “D,” and put A, B, C or D next to every task on your task list.
Pro tip: If you want to know more about the Eisenhower Matrix, you may want to read Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits for Highly Effective People (habit three, specifically).
