<ol><li>Beware the seduction of task-based lists: the process can create a sense a false sense of satisfaction once you cross intems off the list.</li><li>Focus solely on themes that will drive growth: You have to understand the key drivers of your business and anything that doesn’t move those drivers isn’t a high priority.</li><li>Forget perfectionism: You have to be willing to do things half way just to get more done with the higher chances to yield strong results.</li><li>Do the hardest thing first: It eliminates the nagging dread that will sap energy away from other tasks as you postpone the inevitable. </li><li>Don’t plug leaky boat holes -- switch boats. Time spent bailing is time taken away from adding more profitable vessels to your fleet.</li></ol>

5 lessons about Prioritization

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Time is money and for entrepreneurs starting out, it is imperative both are utilized to their fullest. To maximize both, founders must prioritize. When we first started out, we were wrestling with some problems on how to build our personal-finance website, NerdWallet.

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First Things First: The 5 Secrets to Prioritization

The process of finding what is important to work on could be translated into this series of simple questions:
<ul>
<li>Do I truly have to do this thing now?</li>
<li>If the answer is Yes, is this “The Most Important Thing?”</li>
<li>If not, where does it fit in relation to the other tasks?</li>
<li>Is someone waiting on me for this?</li>
<li>If so, when do they need it?</li>
<li>Does working/not working on this now have long-term consequences that I am not aware of?</li>
</ul>

Daily prioritization check-in

We live in a culture of urgency, constantly throwing our emotional energy into the latest public scandal, emergency, or cat video. Most of us work in always-switched-on companies where everything feels urgent. Call backs, emails, and meetings are wrought with peak energy. How quickly do you expect a response to an email or changes to a report?

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Why You Need a Daily Prioritization Meeting

Take all of your tasks and assign each a priority.This tool is particularly helpful for those times when you're drowning under a million things to do, as it helps you visualize what's really important and what can wait.Whatever you do, avoid the busy work and time wasters that land in the not urgent and not important quadrant as much as you can.

Use a priority matrix

It means deciding not to do things you'd really like to do. It also means deciding what's the most important task even when everything on your list feels crucial.But if you can prioritize until you have only one thing to focus on right now, you can't help but get to work.

Ruthless prioritization

The Pareto principle states: You tend to get 80% of your results from 20% of your work.What's really tricky is working out what that 20% is that brings in the results. But once you do, you can apply the ultimate ruthless prioritization to your workday: Make that 20% work your priority—and your benchmark for a productive day.

Find your 20% task

To-dos arrive from a variety of sources. Your boss sends you an email, you get a Slack message from IT, a bill arrives in the mail, or a coworker asks for a favor in the hallway.In order to prioritize your task list efficiently, you need a master to-do list that contains all of the tasks you need to prioritize and complete from all of those sources.

Consolidate All of Your Tasks Into a Single Source

Go through your list, review each task, and decide what you want to do with it. You have 4 options:<ul><li>Do: complete the task now</li><li>Defer: complete it later</li><li>Delegate: assign it to someone else</li><li>Delete: remove it from your list</li></ul>

 Analyze Your Task List

When you're really struggling to get anything done, you should try this method, even if temporarily.When you look at your task list, pick a single thing to focus on that day. It could be one big task you really want to get done, or it could be a theme that relates to several of your tasks. Choosing a single task or idea to focus on can be a good way to remind yourself to stay on track whenever you find yourself getting distracted.

Pick a single thing to focus on

Choose a few (usually 3) tasks to get done each day; those become your MITs.When using MITs, your to-do list would have 1-3 of these, and anything else listed would become bonus, "nice to do if you have the time" tasks. You only work on bonus tasks if all your MITs are done—and if all you get through are your MITs, you've still had a successful day.

Focus on your Most Important Tasks (MITs)

Assign each task a priority number, to weigh each task against the others in order to determine where to start first.In these cases, it's also helpful to break your tasks down into smaller tasks to better assign relative prioritizations.

Use relative prioritization

Checking items off your to-do list is a beautiful thing-but it's also easier said than done. The best way I've found to make sure you complete your tasks is through ruthless prioritization. That means deciding not to do things you'd really like to do. It also...

How to Ruthlessly Prioritize Tasks to Get More Done

...means getting more out of the limited time you have each day. It’s one of the cornerstones of productivity and once you know how to properly prioritize, it can help with everything from your time management to work life balance.

Learning how to prioritize...

The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:<ul><li>Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible</li><li>Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it</li><li>Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else</li><li>Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.</li></ul>

Eisenhower Matrix

Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals.<ol><li>Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored. </li><li>Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.</li><li>When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task oriented” - you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.</li></ol>

Master lists

Cut out “good enough” goals with Warren Buffett’s 2-list strategy.<div><ol><li>Write down your top 25 goals: life goals, career goals, education goals, or anything else you want to spend your time on.</li><li>Circle your top 5 goals on that list.</li><li>Finally, any goal you didn’t circle goes on an “avoid at all cost” list. These are the tasks that are seemingly important enough to deserve your attention. But that aren’t moving you towards your long-term priorities.</li></ol></div>

Warren Buffett’s 2-list strategy

Humans are especially susceptible to the “sunk cost fallacy”—a psychological effect where we feel compelled to continue doing something just because we’ve already put time and effort into it.But the reality is that no matter what you spend your time doing, you can never get that time back. And any time spent continuing to work towards the wrong priority is just wasted time.

The sunk cost fallacy

Instead of keeping all tasks on a single level of priority, this method offers two or more levels for each task:<ul><li>Go through your list and give every task a letter from A to E (A being the highest priority)</li><li>For every task that has an A, give it a number which dictates the order you’ll do it in</li><li>Repeat until all tasks have letters and numbers.</li></ul>

The ABCDE method

Rank your work by its true priority with the Ivy Lee Method:<ol><li>At the end of each work day, write down the 6 most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. </li><li>Prioritize those 6 items  n order of their true importance.</li><li>When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the next one.</li><li>Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.</li><li>Repeat this process every working day.</li></ol>

The Ivy Lee Method

Once you’ve prioritized your most important work, it’s time to actually choose how to attack the day.How you start the day sets the tone for the rest of it. And often, getting a large, hairy, yet important task out of the way first thing gives you momentum, inspiration, and energy to keep moving.

Set the tone of the day by “Eating the frog”

Leave work feeling satisfied with what you’ve accomplished, with help of a few “productivity hacks”.

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Productivity Hacks

One of the biggest struggles in the modern workplace is knowing how to prioritize work. Workloads are ballooning and everything feels important. However, the truth is that a lot of the work we do every day doesn't really need to be done. At least not right away.

First Things First: The 5 Secrets to Prioritization

Why You Need a Daily Prioritization Meeting

How to Ruthlessly Prioritize Tasks to Get More Done

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

How to Prioritize Work: 7 Practical Methods for When "Everything is Important"

CURATED BY

First Things First: The 5 Secrets to Prioritization

Why You Need a Daily Prioritization Meeting

How to Ruthlessly Prioritize Tasks to Get More Done

It's time to Read like a Pro.

How to Prioritize Work: 7 Practical Methods for When "Everything is Important"

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.