In the article Why Time Management Is Harming Your Results I suggested that to manage your time better you must assess your priorities. Would it surprise you that even a task as simple as this can cause problems? Prioritization, just like everything else, can work well or fail miserably. What’s important to understand about priorities is that there are many forms of priority management. Here we’ll discuss one method that goes beyond getting a particular result and instead focuses on effectiveness. Most people give little thought to the way they decide what to do next. There are two basic strategies they use. The first is about reaching an end result. It involves planning, assessing impact, putting items in order, and scheduling. Using this approach, you lay out the tasks and determine which are most important, most impactful and most valuable, and do those first. The second is more like running a marathon that never ends. Occasionally, you have to repave the road because it has potholes, the house catches on fire, and deadlines suddenly change. Your attention is distracted from running the marathon because you have to perform repair, put a fire out, and change your plans radically. It’s this second strategy that most often gets employed in the business world. In some cases it can be extremely damaging to both focus and effectiveness. The first strategy is a tool for achieving results. It supports making progress. The second strategy is employed to “manage a situation,” rather than achieve a result. It’s about how you approach the tasks themselves. Here’s what you need to know to understand the second approach. Using this second strategy there are two assessments to make. The first assessment is based on the urgency of a task, and the second is based on importance. Here’s how it works. Urgency This is the first assessment you make. Urgency refers to the immediacy with which a task must be completed. The more immediate the deadline is, or appears to be, the more Urgent it becomes. Urgent tasks tend to be given high priority and get completed first at the expense of Not Urgent tasks. Urgent tasks also tend to be addressed immediately when received, even if another task is currently in process. Not Urgent tasks are ones that get done at a particular time or with a schedule in mind. Said another way, Urgent vs. Not Urgent is a measure of the time-criticality of a task. One very important point to remember: Urgent activities demand immediate attention and are often based on external priorities or results. This may affect your ability to get other tasks completed or how effective you are overall. Importance The second assessment refers to the relative value you assign to a particular task. The higher the value, the more Important the task and the greater the presumed impact of the task. Important tasks tend to get prioritized first while Not Important tasks often get ignored. Important vs. Not Important can be considered a measurement of relevancy to the result. What you need to remember is that Important activities have an outcome that leads directly to your results. This is a critical measure for both focus and effectiveness, and ultimately for the impact you create. As you’re no doubt already noticing, there are some inherent qualities of these measurements that are important to pay attention to. Remember, as noted in the previous article, time management isn’t about getting more done. Time management is about being as effective as possible so you can maximize your results. Now that you understand the basics of this preliminary priority assessment, the question is: What do you do with it? Recognizing which decisions you’re making when it comes to priorities is an important first step. Often, we think of priorities as doing the first task first, the second task second, etc. However, as illustrated by the Urgent/Important questions, this isn’t always the case. For now, ask yourself these questions: 1. How do I determine importance? 2. What makes something urgent? 3. How does this affect both my focus and my effectiveness? In Part 2 I’ll share with you a simple tool for using the Urgent/Important assessment to better maximize your efforts. For now, notice how the Urgent/Important assessments get made and how they affect your results. Then ask yourself this last question: What would improve if I better understood my priorities and approach to priorities?
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:51:42 +0000