Learn How to Prioritize
Each one of us have same 24 hours in a day, no matter who you are, no matter where do you live. Everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If someone appears to be achieving their goals, that simply because he is making the time most of owned.
Every task on your plate isn’t equally matters. The secret behind effective prioritization is to identify which task is important and you need to focus first. On an extensive outlook, every task you ever have to complete can be put into one of listed below categories:
1. Urgent: An urgent task comes with-
Strict deadlines and must be done before specific time period.
2. Less-Urgent: On other hand, less urgent comes with-
Flexible deadlines and you’ve options to complete as your mood strikes.
3. Most- Important: Any task that creates more significant results you’re supposing to accomplish, are most important tasks.
4. Less-Important: these task doesn’t make more difference if you left uncompleted.
But as the life goes, not everything is so simple to be neatly placed into one of these brackets. More often than not, tasks we have on hand overlap two of these categories further complicating the matter.
The four categories that evolve after overlapping include:
1. Important & Urgent
These are the tasks that must make it to the top of your to-do list. Be it catching a flight to preparing a presentation for the meeting next day, keep this category at the highest priority to ensure maximum efficiency.
2. Important but not Urgent
There are also some tasks that are important but can be completed at our discretion. Studying for tests the next month or visiting the dentist are such tasks that you have to do but not entirely sure when to do. One thing worth noting here is that these tasks when not completed for a while actually jumps into the first category where you must do them eventually.
3. Not Important but Urgent
These are the jobs that do have strict deadlines but does not warrant serious consequences if not completed on time. Tasks like paying the bills or cooking the dinner are some these tasks that you should automate or delicate to save some time.
4. Not Important & Non-Urgent
These are the tasks that generally should be avoided but in reality consume the most valuable time. From checking social media activity to gossiping around the corner, are some of the activities that by no means are important and definitely not urgent as well. Every time you find such tasks on your plate, you should either cancel them or attend to them only if you have some spare time left from those of category 1 and category 2 tasks.
To get clear and concise view of all the tasks you are supposed to complete, put them all in the matrix shown below and then prioritize them according to the discussed rules.
No matter how busy and time-stressed you generally are, once you start to commit your tasks according to this prioritization matrix, one thing you will realize is that you might not have enough time to complete all your tasks, but you definitely have more than sufficient time to complete all the important ones.
