Focus on Your Most Important Work with These 9 Prioritization Techniquesįinding the right prioritization technique is personal: The method you choose has to make sense and feel right. You can use it to manage priorities with your boss, coworkers, family, and even that part of your brain that's always on the lookout for new ideas for things to do/new ways to procrastinate that deter you from accomplishing important work. When stakeholders showed up with new, urgent requests, we simply showed them the prioritized list and asked, 'What should we cut in order to accommodate this request?' After seeing the importance of the other things on the list, urgent requests often suddenly became much less urgent.īut it doesn't only work in product development. When I worked in product development, our prioritized lists were our shields against delays and distractions. It's easier to feel justified in declining a meeting invite or delaying an answer to an email when you know exactly what you need to be focused on and why.Įverything is critical! If you feel like you spend your day fighting fires because everything everyone asks you to do is 'urgent,' a prioritized list can help you regain control of your time and push back against unreasonable last-minute panic assignments. Should you really go to that meeting/answer that email? If you let other people create your to-do list for you via meeting requests and incoming emails, you'll never get your important work done. Prioritization techniques address two key issues: The process of prioritizing lets you make informed decisions about what you need to do, what you don't need to do, and when you need to focus on certain tasks. Which one is the most important?Ī prioritization technique helps you answer that question by providing you with a formal method for evaluating the necessity of completing each task on your list. When everything on your to-do list feels like it's of crucial importance (or when someone you answer to feels that way), it's time to use one or more prioritization techniques to make your to-do list more manageable and conquerable.

And we all accept that fact and live with its reality until the worst-case scenario rears its ugly head: There's not enough time to do everything you have to do. There's never enough time to do everything you want to do.

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