Some mornings can get overwhelming – especially Monday mornings that are full of tasks to perform, meetings to attend, and deadlines to meet. One fantastic way to reduce your headache and distinguish between the trees and the bushes as it were, is to draw up To-do lists. You can also take it further and boost your productivity by prioritizing tasks while you’re at it. We’re here to help and in this blog, we’ll break down how to create an effective To-do list and explain techniques for prioritizing tasks. Keep reading!
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Your Roadmap to Creating and Prioritizing To-Do Lists
You’ve recognised that creating To-do lists is a great start to improving your productivity and reducing stress when it feels like you don’t have enough time to do everything. You can also use the process to break down larger and more complex objectives into smaller and more manageable tasks. However, it’s not as simple as that because if you don’t do it right, you can cause more harm than good. You must not only capture and organise your tasks, but you also have to prioritise them well.
That said, here are the steps for creating an effective to-do list and prioritizing tasks.
Step 1: Collate All Tasks into One Source
A to-do list is ultimately a list of tasks that you have to perform and can include quite several seemingly unrelated things. You may have email tasks to perform, Slack messages to respond to, bills to sort out, and so on.
- Your first step is to have your pending tasks in one list. You could set this list up in a notebook, spreadsheet, email inbox, Slack, or apps like Notion or other to-do list apps for better organisation.
- You could even go a step further and use a digital tool to automatically move fresh tasks from multiple sources into one to-do list.
- Once all your tasks are on a single list, you can start analysing and preparing to prioritise them.
Step 2: Review and Analyse Individual Tasks
When you’re sure you have itemized your tasks in a list, you can go through each task and decide your next steps. These next steps include the 4 Ds:
- Do It Now: It can be easy for you to simply and quickly perform tasks that take a short while to complete. This will leave you with only complex and urgent tasks on your list.
- Defer the Task for Later: You can also assign some tasks to be completed later on. This especially applies to tasks that are dependent on others. Remember to create a calendar reminder so that you can later follow up on it. Or, you can add the task to a shared project.
- Delegate to Others: You could also assign tasks to others when appropriate.
- Delete Unnecessary Tasks from Your To-do List: It may be necessary for you to delete task items that you don’t actually need or already performed. For example, it may have been rendered irrelevant by events, or it has a high effort but relatively minimal impact. However, note that it’s not out of place to “recall” a deleted task.
Step 3: Start Prioritizing Tasks
Even after completing the 4 Ds in step 2 above, you may still need to ruthlessly prioritize the remaining tasks. This involves deciding what tasks are more important, what tasks are less important, and what tasks to remove.
Buckle your seatbelts for an exciting ride as we review various techniques for prioritizing tasks.
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Techniques for Prioritizing Tasks on your To-do List
1. The Priority Matrix
You may be a fan of visuals and like to assign tasks to visual sections. In that case, you can use a priority matrix as a tool for categorizing tasks according to specific criteria. For example, the Eisenhower matrix is a commonly used priority matrix that divides tasks into four quadrants: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and not urgent and not important.
- Assign Priority-Based Tasks: You can assign a priority based on urgency and importance to each task and visualize it in a priority matrix. In this way, you can quickly spot the really important tasks while contrasting them with those that are most urgent.
- Urgent Tasks: In this scenario, tasks that are due soon or that are overdue are rated as urgent.
- The Importance Quadrant: You will also have to assign other tasks as truly important, and not so important.
- Team Priorities: Also keep team and company priorities in mind when deciding what tasks matter most and what tasks are truly least urgent and unimportant.
- Begin With the Urgent and Important: Your next step after assigning tasks to the grid or quadrants is to start working on the urgent and important tasks.
- Continue with the not-urgent and important, thereafter, you can move on to the not-urgent and important quadrant.
- Not Urgent, Not Important: Of course, it is advisable to leave the not urgent and not important tasks for last.
- Relative Prioritization: if you have so many tasks in your urgent and important quadrant, it can be of help to assign priority numbers to each task. For example, you can assign numbers 1-10 to all 10 tasks and work in that order. Alternatively, you can drag and drop tasks into priority orders in your To-do list app or Kanban app.
2. The Pareto Principle
According to the Pareto principle, you’re likely to get up to 80% of your results from only 20% of your work. You can therefore prioritize that 20% for a more productive workday. However, the trick is in identifying what tasks fall into the 20% category. Here’s how to identify such tasks:
- Be determined and choose only three to five tasks that matter the most for the day.
- Go a step further and weed those tasks down to two, and then one.
- In this way, you can identify what tasks provide the greatest value.
3. The Eat That Frog Technique
Not to worry, you don’t have to literally “eat a frog” – only do the task that you’re most likely to avoid. The Eat That Frog technique is simply a technique that refers to performing the biggest and most challenging task of the day first. Just as suggested by Mark Twain, your day will not get any worse after eating a live frog first thing in the morning. Here’s how to eat that frog:
- Identify The Frog: You may even have identified the most challenging task for the day the night before. This could be a difficult meeting that you need to hold or an overdue report.
- Eat That Frog: Commit yourself to that most important task and tackle it.
- Continue With Other Tasks: the “frog” is out of the way so feel motivated to power on through the remaining tasks.
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4. Timeboxing
Do you feel more motivated when you give yourself time limits or deadlines? Indeed, doing so can be productive and using the timeboxing technique can help you allocate specific time slots to individual tasks. You are simply setting periods per task so that you can tick them off your list as you perform them.
- First estimate the amount of time each task will need.
- Block off the time slots in your calendar. For example, you may assign two thirty-minute tasks to a specific hour.
- Stick to your schedule and work on tasks during the assigned period.
- Note that you may adjust your time estimates within limits but do not create a habit of stretching them. Keep a steady pace and build momentum.
- You may even set a timer using a phone alarm and take a quick break or move on to the next task when the timer rings.
5. ABCDE Method
This prioritisation technique is implemented according to the importance and urgency of tasks. Just like the 4D process of Do, Defer, Delegate, and Delete, you designate tasks under the letters and assign them accordingly.
- Begin by listing all tasks and assigning a letter (A, B, C, D, E) to them.
- A: Must-do tasks: These high-priority tasks have to be done first and quickly.
- B: Should do tasks: These tasks may not be as urgent as those in letter A but they are important and should be done next.
- C: Nice to do tasks: While these tasks may not be critical, you can still do them when you have time.
- D: Delegateable tasks: these are tasks that you should be happy to hand over to others.
- E: Eliminate unnecessary tasks: These are tasks that have very little value and impact and you can just remove them.
- Remember to regularly review and adjust your task list as you complete tasks or add new ones.
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6. The Ivy Lee Method
This prioritization technique was created by Ivy Lee and is known for being simple and straightforward. You get to pick six important tasks for the day and then prioritize them.
- Itemize Six Important Tasks: List out the six most important tasks for the next day.
- Prioritize Tasks: Rank the tasks by order of importance.
- Perform The First Task: Start the next day with the task at the top of your to-do list. Only move to the next task after completing the current one.
- Exhaust Tasks on The List: It’s great if you can finish the six tasks. Otherwise, move incomplete tasks to the next day’s list, but ensure that the list has only six tasks as well.
Digital Tools to Aid Prioritization and Implementation of To-do Lists
- Reduce Distractions: Update your teammates via communication apps so that they know not to distract you with less urgent matters. Also use tools such as a distraction blocking app to block off or reduce time spent on non-productive websites.
- Be Organised: using productivity tools such as Zoom Scheduler can help you schedule tasks and set reminders. Another great tool that can remind you of the day’s tasks is a Chrome extension such as Momentum.
- Leverage To-Do List Apps and Their Integrations: A to-do list app such as a Kanban board and integrations such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Outlook, can help improve your productivity in multiple ways.
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Enhancing our Productivity with Effective To-Do Lists
Drawing up effective to-do lists goes beyond merely itemizing a list of tasks. You need to be strategic and not only organize but also prioritize the tasks. In this way, you can better maximize your productivity. Better still, you can implement prioritization techniques such as the Priority Matrix, the Pareto Principle, and timeboxing to help you tackle important tasks with more confidence and clarity. With regular review processes to adequately adjust your lists and relevant use of digital tools to streamline your processes, you can take control of your tasks and ensure a fulfilling workday.
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