Time management in simple words. Priority of tasks

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Let's talk about the priority of tasks. Many have serious problems with him.

We have all seen people who, even for a minute, cannot sit idle. They work from morning to night all their lives. They don't even retire.

But here's the paradox - their life is not getting better!

Bad luck?

Nope … They have a different problem - priorities. Or rather, their absence.

We will talk about priorities today.

Eisenhower Matrix

I am sure that this square, which is being reprinted from book to book, has already blurred your eyes:

Popular sign. And for good reason.

As you know, success lives in the second quadrant. You need to regularly invest time in matters that are not urgent, but important.

What are these things?

For example, reading books. Nobody forces you to read. It is not urgent. But only a person who reads can achieve success "with a long game."

Another example is playing sports. Out for a run? This will add to you only 0.1% health. And the effect can only be seen years later. But the years will pass anyway. You will stand next to the "couch schwartz", and the changes will be oh so noticeable.

Why am I all this?

Losers (and they like to blame bad luck) have no concept of "importance" at all. They live in a house with a "Urgency" sign.

Is it urgent? So important! Does not burn? So it will wait a little longer.

The affairs of the most valuable quadrant - the second - are not being carried out.

They never have time for books. But they will be the first on the sale of irons.

How will be correct?

Do the important things first.

This is common sense, damn it!

You woke up in the morning, rubbed your eyes and immediately start thinking in the direction of important things. Perform them first and only then - everything else.

How to prioritize a case?

I like the Agile Results system in this regard. Simple as a felt boot. It pulls the thread from your goals for the year to goals for the week and then for the day. And ties them all together.

By doing something during the day, you realize that it is a little bit, but it brings you closer to your goals for the year. It also motivates great!

I wrote in detail about this system in the article "How the milkmaid Dunya went to success."

How can all this be put into practice?

I'll show you how I did it.

My tasks have only three priorities: very important (!), Important (*) and unimportant:

And I also have such a category as "quick tasks" - tasks that are completed in less than 15 minutes. I mark them with another asterisk:

As a result, we have this:

This is my important things tab. The tasks are sorted there like this:

• very important and fast;
• very important;
• important and fast;
• important.

And I'm just doing tasks from top to bottom. Well, what could be easier?

I try to spend most of my time in this tab.

As you can see, I am not a supporter of a complex priority system (from 1 to 100, for example). I am sure that for 99% of people, two or three degrees of importance of the task will be enough.

By the way, you can organize everything in the same way in a paper organizer, although I do not recommend it to you.

Summary

It is not enough just to write down all your affairs. It is not enough to plan them out, break them down into small subtasks. It is not enough to introduce them into a rigid system and place reminders.

Be sure to incorporate PRIORITIES into your time management system! Only they distinguish the always busy loser from the person who achieves his goals.

Write in the comments

Do you do the important things first?