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How to Prioritize Work Tasks: The Ultimate Guide to Priority Management
The ABCDE Method
This method consists of ranking your tasks into five categories.
- A – Very important, must be done at all costs.
- B – Pretty important, but the consequences aren’t as serious if it’s not completed.
- C – It would be nice to have done, but with no consequences for not doing it.
- D – Delegate this to someone else as it's not worth your time.
- E – Eliminate. Not worth doing, delete it.
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"Urgent" vs "Important"
Take all of your tasks and place them into four quadrants:
- To do first: the most important responsibilities that need to be done today or tomorrow.
- Schedule: important tasks that are not urgent.
- Delegate: essential items that are not important.
- Don't do: tasks that aren't important or urgent.
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Master lists
Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored.
- Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task oriented” - you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.
Eisenhower Matrix
The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:
- Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
- Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
- Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
- Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.
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Align your to-do list with goals
- Break down your big goals into daily tasks. You can't add "Get in shape" to your daily to-do list, but you can add "spend 30 minutes on my bike."
- Consider your week as a whole. You likely have multiple goals. Some goals benefit from daily activity, while working towards others a few times a week can create momentum.
- Add your have-to-do tasks last. We often fill our to-do lists with have-to-do tasks that crowd the whole day. Adding it last forces you to fit your have-to-do tasks around your goal tasks.
Have one daily priority
Many of us start our mornings with dozens of things we need to get done, but later realize that we haven't crossed any of them off our lists. We did get stuff done, but none of the things we planned.
A balm against hectic days that pass without progress is to choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar. If you struggle to select your top priority, ask yourself, when you look back on your day, what do you want the highlight to be? That's your priority.