What is your priority?
Sometimes, it is a difficult thing to decide to determine what the most important thing you should be doing right now. Setting priorities is a critical thing in order to get things done.
What is your method for setting priorities and getting things done?
You’d think with all the technology that encompasses my life, that I would use Outlook tasks or electronic reminders. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.
I use a simple notebook to list all of my tasks. I simply write down my tasks that I need to do for any given day so that I have all of my tasks in one place.
Some people I know will try to prioritize what is most important and do those tasks first. If something is critical, I will do this… I only worry about prioritizing that way if I have something that absolutely must be done that day.
Most often, I have tasks that are okay if I get done over the next few days. If that is the case, I tackle the easiest tasks first. Since I like to see progress, I find that getting the easy tasks off my list first, my list gets shorter and I feel like I am moving forward.
At the end of the day, I will look over my list of to dos. I will take inventory of what has been done and what still needs to be accomplished. I will then manually transfer unaccomplished tasks to the next day. If I find that I move a task more than one day, then I make a decision if that is something that I really need to be doing. I have found that many times those tasks are tasks that won’t get me where I need to be. If so, I will take them off my list or put them on a long term “to do” list.
If I haven’t accomplished tasks that I feel are important, then I will usually set a time aside on my calendar where I can focus on that one item. I have found that if I turn a task that is hard to accomplish (or something important that I am postponing for some reason) into a time slot on my calendar, then I can do what I need to do when I need to do it.
If you don’t set your priorities appropriately, you’ll never get anything of consequence accomplished.
Corey Smith is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer.
He is the webmaster for CopierCatalog.com, the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems, the Editor in Chief for OfficeProductNews.net and the VP of Technology for Seybold Scientific.
You can find him on Twitter, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.
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Re:
Corey, now you are living the GTD lifestyle. This is great advice, and thank you for sharing. I find so many that don't live like this and I have no idea how they get things done. Oddly enough I stay very busy, but you couldn't tell it by my calendar. It is my list that would tell this tale.
Again, thanks. I enjoyed the reading.