How to Prioritize
Prioritizing, essentially, is logically thinking about how you spend your time. When you arrive at work each morning, you might come full of optimism and with a full to-do list. But office distractions like phone calls, meetings and unexpected emergencies distract you from your larger, more important projects that are necessary for getting ahead in your career. Here are some tips to prioritize tasks.
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Instructions
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Gather all the information you need in order to make a correct assessment of how urgent or important a task is. Important tasks are those that relate to your interests and larger life goals. Urgent tasks require your attention immediately. If you have projects competing for your time, find out how important they are to your clients, and think about which are more important to you.
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2
Make a categorized list of things to do. Instead of jotting down tasks and projects as they come to you, list each item in order of descending importance under one of the following categories: urgent and important; important, but not urgent; urgent but not important; not important or urgent. When deciding what to do, start with the urgent and important tasks first.
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3
Manage office distractions by responding to emails and phone calls in one block of time. If you are working on something important, then you should devote your full attention to it. Every time you stop what you are doing to pick up a phone or peruse email, you loose time when you have to refocus. Limit your availability and allow yourself to concentrate.
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4
Delegate projects whenever you can. A big way to prioritize tasks and manage your time is knowing what can be done by others. Doing something needlessly, even if you do it well, is not productive. Sure, it makes you feel busy; but look at the list you made in Step 2. If it's an urgent task that you must make sure gets done, or a career project, great. If not, find somebody else to take care of it.
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Keep a journal detailing your progress, including what tasks you had on your list, what tasks you completed and when you completed them. This is an effective way to look for patterns in your work habits. You'll be able to see at a glance when you work best and what distracts you most.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't over schedule yourself. If you book yourself solid, many factors could cause a delay and put you behind as you scramble to clean up the mess. And cleaning up messes isn't one of your priorities.
Beware of diminishing returns. Putting a lot of yourself into a project is fine, but don't become so attached that you forget you have other things to do. Remember, your product is only as good as the client's recognition of it's value.
