Setting Priorities as a Time Management Tool

Determining Deadline

In our case, let's start with the time-based deadline list first. Although this may seem basic, it's surprising how many people don't assign proper deadlines. Some don't assign deadlines at all. You should not accept a project without a time goal. Otherwise, projects languish, or you aren't ready when it is required. From the opposite perspective, not everything has to happen tomorrow! If you require that others around you set a well-thought-out deadline for you, it sets a great example. And you should do the same for them.

In your "to-do" list, put the initials of the person from whom you received the project and the deadline. Do this, if for no other reason, to jog your memory. And be complete in your entries. I've looked at an item on my list more than once and thought, "What on earth did I mean by that?"

Determining Priority

Once you have the deadlines established, you can look for acuteness. A great example can be found in the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007). They explore the question of "Mission Critical" with a military example.

Make the main objective clear enough that everyone absolutely knows his or her own part in the final goal or result: If all communication were suspended, each person would know what he or she needs to keep working on to make the mission a success. In the military example, knowing that he or she must hold the line at a certain boundary means that the last surviving soldier knows to keep trying to hold that line, no matter what (because help is on the way, so never give up). This is another extreme example to help us focus. Managers: Are you communicating well enough that your own absence from the process doesn't slow it down? Setting appropriate priorities with the group will ensure your coworkers can keep moving with the project. This creates an efficiency that helps everyone.

Next, ask yourself if something in your overall mission will fail if you don't perform this task. Look at your strategic plan and decide if what you are going to do today positively affects the plan. Even if you are handling something that has nothing to do with the overall corporate strategy, you may be the link in the chain that will cause something to fail or succeed. For most businesses, if your computer servers are down, it's like having the blood flow cut off in the body. Some work can still happen, but it's not much, and it's not for long. So that would take priority because it's very time sensitive (productivity wanes quickly), it's universal (everyone in the company is affected), and it's critical (there is generally no substitute method to achieve the needed results).

So, you may have a priority project that has a short deadline. But, something else you are working on may have a higher priority in terms of keeping the overall mission moving. Be sure to look at all the elements of the project and consider all three aspects: how short the deadline is, how many people are affected, and whether we can get along another way if this project isn't finished.

Finally, it is very important not to get so caught up in the process of planning and prioritization that you never actually finish the mission. You can use color-coding, ABCs, or important-versus-urgent prioritization methods and never get a thing done. Many businesses have died the slow death of paralysis by analysis because they plan to plan but never act. Balance your decisions carefully, but don't get lost in the documents, plans, meetings, and processes. Sometimes, you just need to go and do, even without 100 percent perfect plans. The momentum of 95 percent will carry you, and you can adjust as you go.