Priority Management - Improve Your Effectiveness

by Lucy Cadman @ Developing People Ltd

Earlier this month, for the first time since I started working at Developing People Limited, I started to feel rather like I was drowning under a sea of paperwork and never-ending tasks, for which I did not have enough hours in the week, let alone in a day. It took a couple of quite serious mishaps with relatively simple tasks to make me sit back and decide to find a better way to deal with things that would result in everything being completed correctly and on time without me bouncing about the office rather like a tightly coiled spring.

Do you find that your working days get longer and you end up working weekends and evenings just to keep up? Is there never enough time in the day to complete all your tasks? Are you constantly asking your boss for an extension of time, or even worse, brushing tasks under the carpet and hoping they will be forgotten? If so, you need to read on to find out how to manage your priorities better, and in turn how to improve your effectiveness.

Try this simple experiment. Take some large stones, several handfuls of gravel and several handfuls of sand. Now put them into a small bucket in this order – sand first, followed by gravel and then the stones. What happens? The sand fills up the bottom of the bucket, the gravel fills up the next part, and not all the stones fit in at the top. But what if you placed the stones in first, followed by the gravel and then the sand? The gravel and sand fall into and fill in the gaps around the stones and hey presto - you have managed to fit everything into one small bucket!

This very simple visual experiment demonstrates the power of priority management. Do the important priorities (ie. the big stones) first and then the smaller ones (ie. the sand and the gravel) can be fitted in around them during the working day or week. Do it the other way round and you will find yourself constantly working extra hours just to catch up on the “important stuff”.

So how should you decide on what your priorities are?

The first suggestion is something called the Pareto rule. Pareto was an Italian economist who identified that 80% of the wealth in Italy was produced and owned by 20% of the population. This 80:20 rule applies to many other situations for example, 80% of profits often come from just 20% of a company’s products or services, and 80% of the worlds pollution is caused by 20% of the world’s population. Using Pareto’s rule you can identify what your important priorities are and where you should focus - what 20% of your priorities or activities will give you 80% of the results you want?

The second suggestion is the concept of “important” and “urgent” – do you know the difference? Draw four boxes as two rows and two columns. Along the bottom of the boxes, write “important” and an arrow pointing to the right. Up the left side of the boxes, write “urgent” and an arrow pointing upwards. Split your tasks into these four boxes in the following way. The top right box is for tasks that are both urgent AND important. The top left box is for tasks that are urgent but not important. The bottom right box is for tasks that are important but not urgent, and the bottom left box is for tasks that are neither urgent nor important. Tasks which are urgent and important must be completed first. Tasks which are urgent but not important come next. Important but not urgent tasks are in third place, and tasks which are neither important or urgent should be delegated or scrubbed off your list altogether (and believe me, that can feel remarkably refreshing and theraputic, if you are sure you are scrubbing out the right tasks!)!

Getting your priorities right will ensure that you are more effective at what you do, and more accomplished in achieving your tasks. It will lead to a calmer and more efficient working environment, and you will reap the reward of being able to leave your job behind when you go home on time at the end of the working day every day. I have left the office on time every day for the last two weeks, and been a nice mummy rather than what my children none-too-fondly call a “growly bear mummy” into the bargain. It’s a much better way of life!

For more information on how Developing People Limited can help maximise your Priority Management skills, please see our training course on Personal Effectiveness and Priority Management. You can also contact us on 0845 409 2346 or by email to enquiries@developingpeople.co.uk to discuss the needs of your business or organisation.