By Phil Geldart on January 30, 2018
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published October 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
It’s important to acknowledge that there is limited time available for any particular task or activity. It is unreasonable to assume that you can simply load down yourself, or someone else, with work in the hopes that it will “somehow get done.” There is only a limited number of hours in the day, and each hour spent working must be appropriately planned to generate the maximum possible output.
Establishing the order in which work will be done
At the beginning of each day, business cycle, or project initiative, you need to give a great deal of thought to establishing the order, or sequence, in which you will do the work, bearing in mind the need to do the most important things first. This is the process of setting priorities and ensures that at the end of the day you’ve made the greatest possible contribution.
Since we all seem to have work coming to us from various sources—customers, leaders, the priorities of others, our own initiative, etc.—we must have some way of ordering this work. The way to do so is to push each of these requests through the four filters outlined in our previous post on Setting Priorities: Key Criteria.
By reviewing each item against the degree of urgency for the request, the rank of the person making the request, the time it will take to complete it, and the impact or consequence it will have, you have created the best possible set of screens for sorting the requests and putting them into the most appropriate order.
This order becomes the priority list numbered from the most important to the least important, which serves as the template for action. Start with the most important, and work through to the least important.
Periodically review all requests and to-dos
In the real world, additional requests are also constantly coming in. The best approach in these circumstances is to set aside time to periodically review all the requests and re-juggle your priorities. In practice, this means taking your existing ordered list, reviewing the recent requests that weren’t considered when you made it, and re-ordering your priorities. The only thing to bear in mind here is that you ensure that you do this re-ordering at the completion of a given task, not in the middle of one. There are only a very few sets of circumstances (e.g., a true crisis) when the time is not available to complete the task you are currently working on, or at least a reasonable portion of it, before reordering your priorities.
The rigorous application of these principles, that is, the sorting of priorities against these criteria, is the best way to ensure that your time is being maximally productive.