Most of the work we do in our day to day life is meaningless. This work does not contribute anything to the output. And we perform the unwanted work because either we are not clear about the work or we do not have it in a hierarchical format. Work prioritization is a necessary requirement for time management.
Hence work prioritization is a process of listing the task in a structured ordered on the basis of its importance and urgency. It clearly shows the list of task to be done and eliminate the unwanted task.
Step required for Work Prioritization
- List down all your task:
- First, you need to list down the entire task to be completed.
- Divide your list into short-term activities and long-term activities. You can also break the list on daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.
- You need to go through the list daily and update it. While updating you need to cancel out the completed task and write down the new task.
- Prioritization: Follow Time Management Matrix
- Important as well as Urgent: First complete the task that falls under this category.
- Important but not Urgent: You have time for this type of task. So decide when you will start and plan for it.
- Urgent but not Important: Assign this type of job to someone else.
- Neither Urgent nor Important: Eliminate this type of job from your task list.
- Dividing bigger task into smaller segment
- While handling a bigger task, break the task into several smaller task.
- Again do prioritization of smaller segment.
- An advantage of dividing into several tasks is to make it more understandable.
- Estimating timeline
- You should know your capability of how much work you can do in a day.
- Accordingly, estimate the deadline for each and every task.
- Avoid doing multiple tasks at the same time.
- Avoid postponing of any task.
- Avoid making a long-term plan and stick the deadline.
- Managing Long-term priorities
- Be clear about your objective and goal.
- Divide it several small tasks or stages
- What are the challenges may encounter?
- Keep the record of every stage.
- Keep track of each and every activity
- Maintain a separate log and write a note about each activity.
- If any interruption happens, note down it
- This will help to make a better plan in the future.
