Prioritizing Your Tasks

Your day's all planned out. Every detail, minute accounted for, tasks to be done, ready for the check mark to recognize your accomplishments. But wait, that's not how any day goes if you are in a leadership role, any level, any company. Why? Because there's always unplanned things that come up. Customer emergencies, team dilemmas that require your input, vendors with trucks that got in an accident on the highway, phone calls from school about a puking kid, or a thousand other things that derail managers everyday.

Did you know the average person is interrupted every 5 - 15 minutes or 4 to 12 times an hour. And after each interruption it can take 15 - 20 minutes to get back on task, so in an 8 hour day, how much are you getting done?

With a full plate of deliverables and a set time for work each day, how do you balance that and find the best way to move between tasks you need to complete and the demands of your team? It's not easy, but here's a strategy I use to guide tasks, importance, where I need to be to complete them, and my approach for ensuring I'm working on the right things.

L - I - M - P

Prioritizing Your Tasks

L - List Your Tasks

Goal: Know what's expected of you by spelling it out.

Expectations: Tasks can be anything that's on your plate. Do you have a running list of what you're working on, expected deliverables, deadlines, and steps to complete? If not, it's going to be really hard to ensure you can finish if you don't know what you have in front of you. This list can be general and high level to spark your brain as a reminder or it can be extremely detailed out depending on how you like to work and how forgetful you are at things. I have a major list each week of things I need to work on (often things not completed in a single day or week) and I have post it notes scattered around for the urgent calls, tasks, follow ups that I need to get done that day to distinguish between the two. Think about and try methods to capture your list of activitites and see what works for you, but ensure you are writing it down to help you visually remember.

I - Importance of Each Task

Goal: Understand and rank the importance level of each task.

Expectations: How many of you have done a thousand things and didn't move anything forward? The hits of dopamine we get each time we check something off our list is almost universal and often doesn't last. Sometimes we take on unimportant tasks and do them because we always have, or it feels good, or someone has to do it. But ask yourself, if it's so unimportant, why am I doing that instead of something else? Many people use a 2x2 to rank their projects, focusing on the urgent and important along with not urgent and important tasks before tackling anything else. Consider ranking your projects here to really think about what's important and what's not important. And taking time for the important things that aren't urgent is the toughest box, but what I've found is if you don't do it when it's not urgent, you'll end up having to do it when it is.

M - Make a Decision

Goal: Decide what you're going to work on and what you're not going to do.

Expectations: One of the phrases that drives me crazy each football season is when announcers say "this team controls their own destiny" as if that's not true for anyone, anywhere, anytime. And like any football team, you can control your own destiny. You, whether consciously or not, decide each day what you are going to work on and focus on for that day. You can choose to work off-site, choose to shut your door (if you have one), choose to turn off your phone or set up shop at a coffee house in a town where no one knows you. You can also choose to talk, pick up every call, answer every text, respond to every email immediately and leave at the end of the day not having done what you need to get completed. That's a decision. It's a hard one with all the stimulus around to shut things off or say you're going to work on one thing and not another, but whether consciously or unconsciously, you are deciding each day, so why not make it something you're doing on purpose.

P - Prioritize & Execute

Goal: Prioritize your activities, schedule time, and work on the things that matter.

Expectations: Take the thousands of marbles that make up your various tasks, make a decision about what's important, and then build your day or week or month around that prioritization. Give yourself time to work on the things you deem important. Block your calendar to get them done. Break them into little pieces if you need little wins along the way, but keep them moving until you get them done. Being able to evaluate, prioritize and execute important tasks will allow you opportunities well beyond your current role and will help you manage your daily expectations with unexpected surprises.

No day is the same when you are leading teams. Surprises always happen and you can become a victim of your surroundings or be purposeful and LIMP into your day with a plan to work on the things that matter to your team, your customers, and your company. Think about yourself as an employee that you have to manage, knowing all your faults, controlling your brain that can talk you into or out of things, and try to create a framework that helps you get the things done that are important.

I'd love to hear about your prioritization methods, ideas and tools you use to effectively accomplish your goals. Good luck jumping into 2024 with a new outlook, prioritization framework that will help you achieve more than you might believe you can.

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