I believe in being a self-directed leader and one thing that self-directed leaders do is to prioritize their workload. This is a powerful technique that will help you to make progress on your most important goals, projects, and tasks.
The power of prioritization is that you are consciously making a decision as to what you will work on first, and there are at least three strategies you can follow to prioritize what you want to work on:
- Listing your goals and tasks in order of priority using a simple numbering system.
- Doing a Q-Sort to identify your highest priorities.
- Prioritizing tasks based on their urgency and importance.
Numeric Prioritization
The most basic prioritization system you can use is to assign a number to each of your goals, projects, and tasks. Doing this will dictate which tasks you work on first each week and this will make you a more effective self-directed leader.
To get started, write out your goals, projects, and tasks on a sheet of paper or in a document on your computer. Don’t try to prioritize them yet. Just make a complete list of everything you need or want to accomplish over the coming weeks.
Read through your list and decide what your most important task is. Write the number 1 beside that task.
Next, decide on the task that you most need to work on after your top priority task is complete, and mark that as task number 2. After that, choose your third most important task, then keep numbering the tasks on your list until every task has a number.
One important thing to do when using this prioritization system is to give each task a unique number. Even if two tasks seem to have equal priority, make the difficult decision, and choose one task over the other as the most important, then number those two tasks accordingly.
Once each task has a number, start a fresh page, and list your goals, projects, and tasks in order of priority, starting with task number 1, task number 2, and so on. This will give you have an ordered list of what to work on.
Each week take the first item on your list and work on it first. After that, you can move on to task number 2, then task number 3, and so on. The idea here is that you commit to your priorities and always work first on the tasks you have designated as your highest priority.
Using this numeric system of priorities is simple and will have you focusing on your top priorities. This will ensure that your most important goals, projects, and tasks get worked on each week and that you don’t neglect areas of your life that are important to you.
Q-Sort
This weekend I learned a new prioritization technique in my project management class called Q-Sort, which stands for qualitative sorting. This is a prioritization strategy with steps that will have you grouping your goals, projects, and tasks into different groups based on priority.
The Q-Sort process follows these steps:
- STEP 1: Divide your goals, projects, and tasks into two groups by priority: High and Low.
- STEP 2: Create a third group called Medium. Review the goals, projects, and tasks in your High priority and Low priority groups and move goals, projects, and tasks into the Medium priority group if you think that they don’t belong in either the High priority group or the Low priority group.
- STEP 3: Create a Very High priority group and a Very Low priority group. Pick the goals, projects, and tasks from your High priority group that are the most important to you and add them to your Very High priority group. Do the same for your Low priority group by moving the goals, projects, and tasks with the lowest priority to the Very Low priority group.
- STEP 4: The final step is to review the projects, goals, and tasks in each of your five groups: Very High, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low and to move tasks between groups if you feel they are not in the right group. The idea is to be sure that each of your goals, projects, and tasks is in the correct group.
After performing these steps, you will have a grouping of project and tasks based on priority, from very low priority to very high priority. You now have a plan for which goals, projects, and tasks you should work on first.
Each week when you are deciding what to work on, pick a goal, project, or task from your Very High priority group and work on that task first. Be sure you are focusing most of your time on energy on this Very High priority group, and you will make progress on your most important goals, projects, and tasks.
Note that you will most likely end up with more than one goal, project, and/or task in each of your prioritization groups. Once you have these groups, you can apply numeric prioritization to that group to help you decide which of your highest priorities to work on first.
The biggest benefit to combining Q-Sort and numeric prioritization is that you will have a smaller number of goals, projects, and tasks to prioritize numerically after you have identified your Very High priority tasks. Just apply numeric priorities to that group and then start working on your top priorities.
Urgency and Importance
Another system of prioritization, which I learned from Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, is to group your goals, projects, and tasks based on their urgency and importance. With this system, you work to identify your most important goals, projects, and tasks and to then focus your time on energy on them.
Urgency is a factor in Stephen Covey’s prioritization system, but an urgent task is not necessarily an important task. What Stephen stresses in his book is that your most important tasks are not necessarily the urgent ones and that you need to spend time on important tasks that are not urgent. Stephen also teaches that you should try not to spend time on non-important tasks, which can be a challenge when faced with a non-important task that seems to be urgent.
My understanding of this process is that you should create a grid and group your goals, projects, and tasks into the following four categories:
- Urgent and Important
- Important and Not Urgent
- Urgent and Not Important
- Not urgent and Not Important
Stephen Covey refers to these four groups as quadrants, and he encourages us to live in quadrant 2, which is a focus on tasks that are important but not urgent.
My recommendation is to use Stephen Covey’s system by grouping your goals, projects, and tasks into the four categories listed above, and then striving to work on your important and non-urgent tasks. This will help you to make progress on your most important goals, projects, and tasks.
There will be times that urgency requires you to work on less important tasks based on deadlines or other considerations that cause a task to become urgent, but ultimately if you are a self-directed leader, you will spend time working on goals, projects, and tasks that are important but not urgent.
One last consideration is that you can combine this technique of grouping tasks by urgency and importance with Q-Sort and numeric sorting. To do so, follow these steps:
- Group your tasks into the four categories based on urgency and importance.
- Perform a Q-Sort on your important and non-urgent tasks to identify your highest priority tasks.
- Numerically sort your highest priority tasks from step number 2.
The result of combing all three prioritization techniques is that you will have a clear picture of what you should work on first.
Conclusion
Prioritizing your goals, projects, and tasks will make you a more effective self-directed leader. It will also move you closer to fulfilling your most important responsibilities and to completing your most important goals.
You have at least three strategies available to you:
- Listing your goals and tasks in order of priority using a simple numbering system.
- Doing a Q-Sort to identify your highest priorities.
- Prioritizing tasks based on their urgency and importance.
All three of these techniques will make you more effective and I encourage you to start using them in your own life. Identify your top priorities using these techniques, and then follow your priorities. Who knows what you will achieve?