If you’re a busy business owner with lots on your plate, it can sometimes be overwhelming knowing where to begin. If you try and do it all, things will undoubtedly get neglected, or you’ll find yourself dreading those painful hours when you have to trawl through hundreds of unread mails.
When everything is important, how do you prioritise? Use these five tips for prioritising tasks better:
Set some non-negotiable 'me time'
An uninterrupted fifteen minutes a day can be very helpful. Some time where you can just focus on what needs to be done. Block it in your calendar, tell people not to book over this time, and stick to it religiously - if you're taking it seriously, so will others.
Categorise your tasks from high to low priority
Depending on how precise you want to be, you could organise your to-dos by setting A, B and C priorities. You can find out more in this book: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Always start with a high priority ‘A’ task, even if you can only accomplish a small part of it and leave the low-value administrative tasks for later. These are things you could probably accomplish in between meetings, or when your brain is in more of an admin mode.
Use an app to help you manage your tasks better
In WorkflowMax by BlueRock for example, every job consists of several tasks. You can use the task manager for a complete overview of all the tasks across all jobs that each staff member should currently be working on. At WorkflowMax, we also use Trello to stay on top of our individual tasks. If you need something simpler, use notes or reminders in your phone or online calendar or try something like TeuxDeux.
Create some artificial deadlines
Let’s face it, deadlines help us complete things. So set some. Even if your deadline is ‘get X done before lunch’ or ‘have a snack after you complete Y’. Better yet, tell someone. And then hold yourself accountable.
Review regularly
An approach you used last year may not be right this year. Has your workload increased significantly? You may need to add another type of categorisation. Maybe the time of day you set for ‘me time' is now a weekly sales call with the rest of the team. You need that time back so adjust accordingly.
The five tips above are a sure fire way to help you prioritise tasks better and get more done. What methods do you use to prioritise your tasks?
