It’s a workday afternoon like any other. You sit at your desk with a cup of coffee and look at the computer — and you’re faced with a decision. You’re managing a new project and your inbox is overflowing with employee questions. A colleague you know is struggling with their own project management tasks knocks on the door. And you need to develop an innovative new progress tracking method to pitch to your boss. What do you do first?
A typical day involves dozens of tasks, like checking in with team members, answering emails, and addressing personal obligations.
If you don’t prioritize these tasks in an organized and well-informed manner, you’re a ship without a sail. You’ll move through your day with little direction and purpose, becoming easily overwhelmed and out of control.
Task prioritization acts as your sail by guiding you through your day as you follow your task list. This efficient time management means you’ll enjoy more work-life balance and offer higher quality work without missing deadlines, so learning how to prioritize your tasks really is invaluable to your professional development.
What does it mean to prioritize tasks?
Task prioritization involves taking stock of every task, typically daily and weekly, and organizing them by importance level. You might also categorize each item by urgency level.
Be aware that urgency isn’t the same as importance. Answering a client’s email might be urgent since they need a timely response, but maybe not as important as completing all deliverables in their pipeline by end-of-quarter.
Once you know how important and urgent each task is, you can determine what resources you need for each, like time and coworker help, to outline when and how you’ll complete each item.
Here’s a great way to organize tasks by their importance and urgency:
- Do urgent and important tasks like a client report due tomorrow
- Schedule important and non-urgent items like a project timeline due in two weeks
- Delegate items that are urgent but unimportant to your workflow, like booking a conference room
- Eliminate non-urgent and unimportant tasks to instead address more pressing items, like preparing for a presentation later that day
Why is it important to prioritize work tasks?
Sometimes the sheer number of tasks you have can overwhelm you and make you feel like you don’t know where to begin. You might lose motivation because you can’t seem to complete anything as you try to make headway on several items at once.
And if you haven’t prioritized your tasks, you might waste time working on the wrong things, like low-priority items instead of high-stakes and urgent tasks. This affects your productivity and work output, increasing your chance of gaining your manager’s attention — which might lead to a raise or promotion.
You might also miss deadlines and disappoint your team members if you’re slowing down projects because you’re not working on the right items at the right time. So it’s worth learning how to prioritize your tasks to stay on top of your workload.
5 tools to prioritize tasks
Humans aren’t natural time managers. While some are more naturally inclined to organize their time, most people must learn how to prioritize tasks to better achieve their goals. That’s comforting since it means you can learn it, too.
Here are five methods for task prioritization.
1. Task agenda
Start simple by outlining your tasks and deadlines in a time management planner, such as a digital calendar, productivity app, or handwritten agenda. You can create separate personal and professional task lists or house everything in the same space to gain a big-picture view of your day, week, or month.
2. Eisenhower matrix
If you struggle to visualize your priorities, try drawing a two-by-two matrix with “Important” and “Not important” on the X-axis and “Urgent” and “Not Urgent” on the Y-axis. Place tasks in their matching quadrant to categorize everything as either “Urgent and important,” “Urgent but not important,” “Not urgent but important,” and “Not important and not urgent.” Then decide what you’ll take on, schedule, delegate, and eliminate.
3. ABCDE
This technique involves ranking every task from A–E, with A being most important and E being least. Whether for personal or team tasks, this ranking helps everyone understand expectations and provides a clear roadmap for tackling tasks. And, while this method doesn’t account for urgency, you could consider it when debating how important something is.
4. Eat the frog
“Eating the frog” means doing your most dreaded task first, getting it out of the way so you can focus on other items and kick-start your day feeling productive and accomplished. The rest of your day also feels easier since you’re not avoiding some daunting and complex task. And you might feel less distracted because you won’t be thinking about the item you know you have to do but don’t want to.
5. Most important task (MIT)
The MIT method involves choosing a couple of tasks each day and week that are most important and giving them your attention. Once you complete them, you free yourself to work on whatever you like in any order. This method is excellent when you don’t have many urgent daily and weekly tasks and also enjoy more flexible work you can do at any time.
7 tips for prioritizing tasks at work
Task prioritization will look different for you than the next person because everyone organizes their time differently. But here are seven tips you can use to improve your unique strategy.
1. Figure out your rhythm
You’ve probably heard phrases like “Rise and grind” or “Early bird gets the worm.” Waking early is a common productivity strategy because many people feel less distracted and more energetic in the morning, but this isn’t necessarily the right choice for you. Depending on your body and circadian rhythm, waking too early may even be counterproductive.
Consider when you feel most awake and energized during the day and save high-focus tasks for then. Also try to prioritize a healthy sleep routine, physical exercise, and eating nutritiously to encourage mental focus throughout your day.
2. Keep your eye on the prize
Even the most ordinary and boring tasks typically contribute to important long-term goals. And knowing why you’re doing something might make you feel more focused and motivated to complete it. For example, writing a month’s worth of social posts might feel tedious. But if you remember these posts are part of a larger marketing campaign aimed at increasing the company’s revenue by 5%, you might feel more motivated to finish this task on time.
And remember your own professional goals to give tasks more context and meaning. Perhaps meeting every deadline for a month increases your chance of receiving a promotion or raise. That’s ample reason to work hard and complete everything.
3. Prioritize your development
Your personal development is just as important — and often more motivating — than professional growth. So when evaluating an item’s importance and urgency, also account for how it helps you develop valuable hard and soft skills you want to improve. To strengthen your communication skills, place seemingly unimportant tasks like crafting clear emails, checking in with team members, or prepping talking points ahead of meetings into higher-priority items.
4. Give everything a due date
Every task should have a clear deadline — even if your manager hasn’t assigned one. This helps you prioritize your time and better understand what you must do each day, week, and month to stay on schedule. And putting due dates on action items that aren’t time-sensitive might also motivate you to be more productive and overcome procrastination.
5. Track your time
Track how long it takes you to complete every task to better understand how you should prioritize these item types in the future. If you’re a freelance graphic designer, for example, track how long you spend drafting a contract, performing design revisions, or building a pitch deck. Then, adjust future task prioritization lists and client-forward timelines to reflect this information.
6. Manage distractions
Whether it’s an impatient child or a lit-up phone screen, life will carry you away from your work if you let it, so you must consciously try to avoid distractions. Start by observing yourself throughout your workday to notice what steals your attention — maybe checking personal email or playing a game on your phone. Then, set guidelines to limit these activities. You might lock your phone out for an hour at a time while you focus on work or enable browser settings that restrict how much time you can spend on certain pages.
7. Leverage technology
When it comes to task prioritization, technology is your friend. So many digital productivity tools exist, from task management platforms to messaging platform integrations that notify you of task due dates. You can also find browser and app settings that limit use and time trackers to track time spent and create reports for yourself or your manager.
Common daily routine errors
Understanding common mistakes that hijack your focus is essential to setting up a system that lets you focus on your top priorities. Here are a few common errors:
- Checking your phone immediately: The first thing you do in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. A negative comment on social media or a stressful message from a friend might steal your energy and distract you from pressing tasks.
- Endless to-do lists: You can only do so much in a day, and an unrealistic to-do list will likely overwhelm you and hinder your ability to get anything done.
- Leaving the biggest challenge for the end of the day: While it may feel satisfying to quickly check off a bunch of small tasks from your to-do list first thing, these items might distract you from higher priority items that require your focus and time.
Prioritize improving your workday
Life is hectic and complex, and it’s normal to feel overwhelmed by your daily workload every now and then. But learning how to prioritize your tasks is an excellent first step to combat this overwhelm and feel more in control of your life.
Start by assessing your daily and weekly tasks and trying out prioritization methods until you find one that makes you feel motivated and prepared to take on your work. Then, keep the bigger picture in mind — both regarding personal and professional goals — and enjoy tackling each day calmly and purposefully.
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