Planning and prioritizing tasks effectively is key to
productivity and achieving your goals. Planning is about determining all of the
tasks that you need to complete in order to achieve your goals.
To accomplish more, it is important to effectively plan and
prioritize tasks in order to be the most productive and most efficiently work
towards your goals. Planning is deciding all the tasks you have to do to be
able to achieve the goals you set out to achieve. Below is a complete and
thorough approach for you to plan and prioritize as necessary in your life:
Listing all the tasks
1. You will want to brainstorm everything that you need to get done (work,
personal, short-term, long-term). You may want it all on one list. Brainstorm
Everything You Need to Accomplish
Purpose: To capture every task no matter how small or big, so nothing gets
forgotten.
Here are some types of tasks:
Work-related: deadlines, meetings, emails, projects
Personal: errands, health, family, hobbies
Short-term (in the moment, urgent): like paying a bill, or responding to an
email
Long-term (goal related): akin to learning a new skill, or saving for a
vacation
How to effectively brainstorm:
Set a timer (5-10 min) and write down everything you can think of.
Also ask yourself:
"What is weighing on my mind?"
"What have I overwhelmed and thereby procrastinated on?"
"What do I need to do this week/month?"
and it may also be worth including any task you do numerous times, like going
to the gym, completing weekly reports, etc.
2. You will then need to organize this list using an organizational tool
(Todoist, Trello, Notion, or notebook works), whatever is most comfortable for
you.
Categorize All the Tasks
You may want to categorize similarly types of tasks together so that they get
done more efficiently:
• Urgent and Important (do these first) Urgent Deadlines
• Important and Not Urgent (schedule these) Long-Term Goals
• Urgent and Not Important (delegate these when possible)
• Not Urgent, Not Important (perhaps skip)
(This is referred to as the Eisenhower Matrix — I can certainly show you a
visual if you're interested.)
Prioritize Tasks
• What needs to be done today?
• What will have the most positive impact?
Break Large Tasks Down into Small, Accomplishable Steps
• Make it actionable and clear so you know what to do.
• For example, do not say 'Prepare project' but instead say 'Outline project',
and 'Draft first section, etc.'
Realistic Goals
Pick 3–5 main tasks (priorities) per day. Start and finish (not start and leave
open). Setting Realistic Daily Work Goals (3–5 tasks rule)
Choosing to only set a small, achievable number of priorities per day allows us
to focus on completing that task, in turn, reducing overwhelm and building
momentum. Here is how we do it:
Why do we limit ourselves to 3–5 tasks?
• To avoid burnout - feel you did nothing, as you burned yourself out over
too many tasks/state of stress, resulting in a pile of work unfinished, too
many trees in the forest
• To increase your focus - too many tasks will eliminate any chance at quality
objective completion, thus you will not complete the work/priority as well as
you should.
• To increase your consistency - small wins create more motivation in order to reach
potential long term productivity agitation take into consideration your best
times
What are my best times for certain tasks?
• Morning: when you are the most focused
• Afternoon: when you handle only routine or transitions activities, all tasks
are easy
• Evening: Planning + organizing tasks, note-taking, reading a fun book,
self-care, etc.
Review and Modify Daily
• Spend 5 minutes looking back over the day and what you have accomplished.
• Make a note of what you are moving forward to tomorrow based on what is left at the end of the day, documentation or actions, and priority reminders.
Common traps or errors
• Overloading - Be sure to be realistic in what you will accomplish.
• Over-procrastination - You have picked your priority tasks to focus on, so jump in!
• Distractions- keep your mind on your focus and try some of them using time management techniques (i.e., Short term) Pomodoro, and Deep Work (however, change some of these strategies)
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