How to Prioritize Your Workload

Most people, no matter what they do, struggle with prioritizing their work. When you consider that most of us have a lot of tasks but not enough time to do them, a constant flow of emails, and numerous meetings, it is not hard to see why work prioritization is such a huge challenge.

Without a clear sense of priority, most people will usually do the less important tasks first, because it is in our nature to react instead of respond. Unfortunately, checking off tasks from our to-do list does not mean that we will get any real work done.

However, if you master the art of prioritizing your time and tasks, you will realize that most of the work that feels urgent is not urgent at all. 

Task prioritization sounds simple in theory, as you only need to know what you have to do and to rank all your tasks by importance. However, adding this to your workflow is much harder.

When all your tasks are piling up while you are bombarded with emails and notifications that are screaming for your attention, you need to establish a system that will help you get on top of your responsibilities.

If you want to learn how to prioritize your workload, stick around as we will be exploring the how.

All Your Tasks In One List

The first and the most crucial step to prioritize your work is to pull together everything that you have to get done in a day. Right now, you do not have to worry about the number of tasks you have to do. Just be sure not to forget anything as adding the tasks you forgot later could most likely break your process.

Urgent and Important Tasks

Next, take a look at all your tasks. Identify if you need to do any tasks in an urgent matter. Your critical tasks are the tasks that you have to finish by the end of the day without any excuses. Not completing those tasks on time most likely will negatively affect your business.

Take a closer look at all your tasks. All you should see are your important tasks.

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Sort Tasks by Importance

When you have split your tasks into urgent and important groups, you need to rank all your important tasks by the level of importance for your business and yourself.

As a future general rule, you want to precisely recognize which types of tasks have the highest level of importance so that you can prioritize them faster in the future.

Another way to assess the importance of your tasks is to see how many does that task impact. Most likely, the bigger the number of people a task affects, the more critical it is.

Sort Tasks by Effort

If you have a few tasks that you estimate are the same level of importance, you need to figure out which one will take you longer and do that task first. 

Many productivity experts suggest that you eat the frog and do that biggest tasks, but if you do not have the energy right away, start with the smaller task and move up from there. Doing smaller tasks first could be a significant push to get you to do bigger tasks.

Use a Screen Monitoring Software

If you want to be sure how much it will take you to complete specific tasks, start using a screen monitoring software like Insightful.

Final Thoughts

If you manage to prioritize your work successfully, it can help you be more productive and confident when the deadline approaches, and you will be able to do much more in less time.

If you are not able to finish everything on time or if your priorities change, know it is perfectly normal. Just make sure you eventually get back to it.