Setting Priorities
Catrina Clulow FCIM Chartered Marketer
Fractional CMO | Marketing Consultant | Author | SME Tech Marketing Specialist
By setting the priorities, we improve productivity, become more efficient, more focused on those things that are going to really make the difference and move the needle on our business.
If you try to do everything on a great long to do list, you have a million and one things on there that just causes overwhelm. By prioritising, you can put your time and energy where it's going to matter and that helps to reduce all of that overwhelm.
How can you prioritise?
There are various ways of prioritising your time. Your money.
One that you might not know the name of is the Eisenhower but I bet you have used it or at least heard of it. Concentrate on the important over the urgent things.
In this matrix that top right hand corner something that's both urgent and important. That's what you should do first.
If something is important but not urgent, then schedule some time properly in your calendar for it.
If it's urgent but not that important. See if you can delegate it to somebody else so that you can concentrate on those important tasks.
And if something is really not urgent and it's most definitely not important. Then why bother putting it on your to do list anyway? Just forget about it, drop it.
Concentrate on the important and remember this matrix and see what you can do about scheduling or delegating.
Other methods
Pareto. You know that 80% of the results come from 20% of your effort. 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your clients. This is something that is true across a variety of things, so prioritise those things. That are going to give you those 80% of the results. And it's only 20% of your efforts, so prioritise those.
MoSCoW mnemonic really makes sense it stands for: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have.
Do the things in that order so must haves first. Then you follow up with the should haves. Then the could haves. ?You know those nice to haves but aren't really going to make that much difference in the greater scheme of things, and then the won't haves, the things that you really don't need.
We've all come across the ABCDE or the 12345 method of assigning ratings to tasks based on importance. What you've got to remember with these is you can only have one priority A, one top priority, one priority one.
You can't service multiple A's and 1s effectively - it will just drive you and your team to distraction.
Typically you'll have one A or one - that top priority. ?You might have two priority Bs or priority twos, and you gradually have more as you go down. But you concentrate on those As and Bs; those ones and twos.
Choosing the right method for how you're going to prioritise really depends on you, depends on the context.
But all of these methods are about having the same focus on the high value activities. If it's not high value deprioritize it.
The advantages of prioritising.
Tips and tricks?
It's all very well and good me saying use effective prioritisation, but how are you going to do that? And there were plenty of task management tools out there on the marketplace. There are things like Asana, Trello or Todoist, that can help you visualise the tasks and their deadlines. Some people prefer a written list. I'm a bit of an old school person. I still use Microsoft Project because I just like the way that works for me.
But find a tool that works for you.
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Breakdown the larger tasks.
Something that I find really helps me, as if I've got a big task and I'm not quite sure where I'm going to start I actually use the Pomodoro technique by using pomofocus.io - it sets a timer for 25 minutes. Then I have a 5 minute break, 25 minutes. A 5 minute break.
Normally by that time I'm so in the flow I don't need to keep setting it. Sometimes that happens just after the one session. But it encourages me to really focus but take those breaks as well for myself.
Time blocking is another valuable tool. Allocate specific blocks of time for the high priority tasks that you need to do without any interruptions. There is nothing wrong with putting Do Not Disturb on your phone. (I have to do that when I'm doing the VAT return. I have to do that when I'm doing the VAT return work. Because otherwise I just wouldn't get it done. But I need to get it done so that HMRC doesn't come knocking on my door and threaten me with a fine for not returning my VAT return on time – even though they are normally paying me VAT back so it is a benefit for me!)
The two minute rule.
This is found in David Allen’s Getting Things Done. If a task takes less than two minutes to do, just do it. Otherwise you're going to worry about it. You're going to think I mustn't forget to do XYZ, it's going to distract you. So, this works effectively with something like the post or when I'm looking at my emails in the morning, if there's something in the e-mail that I can do right then, just do it, get it sent off away from the inbox, it's dealt with, it's done.
Saying No
One that we all need to learn more and more is how to say the power of No. It is just as relevant to push back and say no to non-essential tasks and distractions. If you're already at capacity, just say I can't do it today, I can do it but only on whatever day. Very often we put ourselves under pressure to do things and clients go yeah, OK, that's fair enough.
Regularly review and adjust your priorities.
Do it on a weekly basis or a daily basis, whatever you need that's going to help you to stay on track. Don't beat yourself up if you can't get everything done on a day that you want to.
I saw a lovely quotation by a lady called Eliza-Mae Austin here on LinkedIn, she actually said if you've only got 10% to give on any given day and you give 10%, then you've actually given 100%.
And I thought that was so good because we all have days where we just don't feel it, and if we try to force it, it's not going to happen. So we just concentrate on the things that have to be done for that day. And then we could, if we are still not feeling it, we can just kick back a bit and not beat ourselves up. Guilt helps nobody.
Accountability groups
If a business prioritises effectively implements prioritisation frameworks then they respond to changes faster and with more flexibility. I’m talking about Scrum or Agile - you don't need to use Scrum or Agile, if you are a small business but you can use one or two of the little tips that are in there to help you.
In my Marketing to Thrive community [link], we have the accountability pillar. We share our goals. In that group to do it monthly. Whereas you could do it daily. Weekly. You actually tell someone else that you are going to do XYZ by a specific time / date and because you share that goal, you're more likely to do it. It is all about psychology.
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Maximising your ROI on Marketing Spend November 14th 2pm UK
November 26th at 2:45pm UK I’ll be live on Stuart Webb’s LinkedIn Live Series It’s Not Rocket Science! He’ll be asking me 5 questions over a coffee which are to help you and your business. I hope to see you there.
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