Time Management – What should be our highest priority?

Priorities will help us to determine what to do NOW!

Everyday you need to ask yourself: “What should I be spending my time on today?”  In order to answer this question with the appropriate actions, we must have a framework for deciding priority.

While time management should be a balanced, full-life endeavour, we will only deal with the professional/work issues here.

A useful framework for deciding what our priorities are starts with our company’s vision/values or mission.  In other words, if customer service is the company’s number one priority, we must ensure that any customer queries are dealt with as a highest priority. Or, if part of our company’s strategy is to be a cost leader (i.e., have less expensive products than our competition), we would work first on any issues that have a cost impact, and so on.

Next we must determine what our own personal role/responsibilities are with respect to that company vision/value or mission.  Often this will be communicated directly from our boss, but many times our bosses don’t have the time or the inclination to provide a lot of direction in this area (because they are too busy pursuing urgent, non-high priority issues).  The best managers, therefore, have their own heightened sense of where they fit and what difference they can make in the organization.

Often what we consider a priority activity in our daily work is determined by our boss’ requests.  We should act first on our boss’ request even if the request does not fit with what we may consider to be an organizational or a personal priority.  This is another way to determine priority.  We term this urgency.  Urgencies are things that we must do now but need not be analyzed for their “worth” with respect to our goals or the company’s goals.  Note that if your boss approaches you with a request we are not suggesting that you blindly carry out the request.  The responsible approach would be to explain your current workload and what you consider to be a priority given what you know.  This will give the boss a second perspective and provide an opportunity to help you rearrange your workload for high priority tasks.

You can use the following questions for preparing a prioritized daily action list:

Step I: Identify high priority goals in the Daily Action List – Ask the following questions to help you make / re-order your action list:

1. Of my long-range and intermediate, high priority goals, which should I work on today?
2. What projects will give the highest return for time invested?
3. What projects will be the greatest threat to my survival or that of my company if I don’t do them?
4. What projects does the boss consider most vital?
5. Which items in my previous Daily Action Lists and Grass Catcher List^Note should I work on today?
6. What do my company’s goals suggest? What does company policy suggest?
7. What has not been considered that will help yield long-term significant results?
   

Step II: Prioritize the Daily Action List – use a code (alphanumeric, for example) to help make your list “pop” and easily referred to with the highest priority task quickly identifiable:
A = Vital     B = Important    C = Some Value

1. Which items will best help achieve my long-range and intermediate high priority goals?
2. What will help yield the greatest long-term results?
3. What will give the highest payoff?
4. What will happen if I don’t do each of these projects today?  Who will it affect? Will anyone suffer?
5. On a long-term basis, which items will make me feel best to accomplish?

Note:  Grass Catcher List is a list you make up of tasks that you want to do but they have no particular due date or urgency.

Source: Time Power, by Charles R. Hobbs, July 1, 1988