How Do I Prioritize?
- Concentration and Focus are needed to achieve success.
- Prioritize the most important tasks first.
- Prioritize your tasks using a list based system.
Concentration And FocusÂ
Concentration and focus are 2 key qualities you must develop to become successful. It is only when you are able concentrate on one thing at a time and focus all your effort on it, will you work most effectively and perform to the very best of your ability.
This principle is often seen in the military, whereby a target is first identified and then attacked with overwhelming force until the mission objective has been accomplished.
However in a war there is never enough time to attack every possible target, so the military must concentrate on focusing their attack on “key targets” whose capture or destruction will have the biggest impact on the war.
What Are Your Mission Objectives?
Just like the military you also have mission objectives in life, these are your goals, and just like in a war you will never have enough time to “attack” them all.
Therefore in order to complete your goals, you must concentrate and focus on the most important tasks whose completion will result in the biggest gain, and this means you must prioritize!
Prioritize The Most Important Tasks
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the value of what you do, comes from 20% of what you do. This means that if you have a list of 10 tasks, 2 of those tasks will be more important than the rest of them combined.
These 2 tasks are therefore the most valuable use of your time and what you should concentrate on completing first.
I Don’t Know What To Prioritize!!!
If you don’t know what your most important tasks are, ask yourself what task if you completed would have the biggest impact on your goal?
Generally you will find that the most important tasks are also the most difficult ones, and the things that are easy and fun to do will rarely have a positive impact on your overall goal.
In case you are unfamiliar with the terms goal and task, a goal is something you would like to do (e.g. loose weight) and tasks are the things you need to do to accomplish that goal (e.g. exercise daily).
If you would like to learn more about goals read these articles on how to set personal goals.
Prioritizing Work = Faster And Better Results
Unsuccessful people tend to focus on lots of tasks at once, and as a result they are often done in a poor fashion or not completed at all.
By prioritizing your most important tasks and then working on them until they are completed, you will not only produce better quality work, but you will get more tasks done and in a shorter period of time.
How Do I Prioritize My Tasks?
One of the best ways to prioritize tasks is simply to write them down on a piece of paper before you go to bed. This way your subconscious can think them over while you sleep.
You can use a numbering system to prioritize your tasks, such as 1,2,3 etc.. Or use an alphanumeric system, for example…
A (top priority tasks) - A1 (most important task, do first), A2 (2nd most important, do after A1)
B (important, but lower priority than A tasks) B1, B2 etc… These tasks are done after A tasks have been completed.
C (not of immediate importance) C1, C2 etc… These tasks are done last.
Although this method is extremely simple, it is also extremely effective, and you will find that all successful people work from some kind of prioritized list system.
Advantages Of Prioritizing A List
One of the many advantages when working with a list is that it allows you to do the two things I have been talking about in this article: concentrate and focus on your most important tasks.
This will dramatically increase your productivity because it will stop you wasting time on other tasks that may appear throughout the day and are of less importance.
If at the end of the day you have not completed all your tasks, you can then add them to the list to be completed the next day.
Final ThoughtsÂ
Creating a prioritized list, then concentrating and focusing on one task at a time, allows you to work harder and progress faster than people who focus on many things at once.
Unsuccessful people do not work from lists, and as a result they do tasks as they appear, which causes them on focus on unimportant tasks that ultimately waste their time.
If you can apply the information you have learnt in this article to your life, two things are likely to happen.
1 - You can gain a reputation for being a hard working and effective person. This means people will want to give you more tasks to do (which will increase your personal value) and therefore you will be given more responsibility and with greater responsibility comes greater rewards. (see this article for a discussion of how service is proportional to reward).
2 - Completing high value tasks will give you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in life. This will raise your self esteem because you know that you are good at what you do.
Prioritize Your Life!
Concentration is like looking at something with a magnifying glass, and focus is like a ray of light shining through it.
The result is an extremely powerful combination, and something you should definitely work on actively using in your life.
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September 20th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Hi,
Nice informative post. Prioritizing is important if we want to stay efficient.
I practise prioritizing the way you lay it out. I also list everything down and tell myself that I have to complete the specific tasks within the a certain time frame. Helps me to keep on track.
Cheers,
Jag
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Hi Jag,
Good point. Setting deadlines is a great way to motivate you to complete your goals.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:09 am
This is an awesome article! I wrote one similar to it at
http://youareliving.com/2008/05/3-ways-to-prioritize-your-goals/
If you could give me any pointers or criticisms I’d love it!
Christopher Truman
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Hi Christopher,
I like the layout of your site. It is very clean and easy to navigate around. Great name for the site aswell!
I agree with your first point. It is best to do the important things first, as these activities will have the biggest impact on the rest of your day.
People often make the mistake of doing the unimportant things first, which then leaves little time to complete the things you really should do.
Reminders are a great way to focus your attention back on the things you should be doing. As often we can become distracted by everyday events that shift our attention from what we planned to do. This is why prioritising your tasks is so important!
Making activites fun is a great way to overcome procrastination, and is something i wrote about in the articles on self discipline.
By “reframing” how you view something, or focusing on the pleasure the completion of that task will bring, can both work as excellent techniques to keep you on track.
Overall you made some good points in the article. It was easy to read, and had a good conversational style.
However one thing i would suggest is to break up your paragraphs. At the moment you seem to have very long paragraphs, which can reduce readability if the paragraph is too long.
When it comes to reading, some people will read the article from start to finish and read every word.
Others will just skim through the article, briefly scanning each paragraph until they find something of interest.
Whilst others will just look at your pictures, or headings, and read something close to it that interests them.
So try to accomodate for all reading styles. You use headings which is good, and i see in your later articles you are also using pictures. Both of these help to increase readability, and liven up the content.
As a general rule, i try to aim for 3-5 lines per paragraph when writing an article. Although what i usually do is create paragraphs by eye, adding a new paragraph based on how i think it looks.
I look forward to reading your future articles!