At the Distance at the University of Practical Psychology, we are working on various methods of self-organization and efficiency improvement. Including how to properly prioritize.
Why prioritize.
The first reason is obvious: to do the most important things first. The second reason is less obvious: so that at any given time you know exactly what business you are now doing. So that there is no choice, because it is at the moment of choice that throwing, excuses, thoughts like “I should go in to drink tea” and so on begin.
Down with throwing, set priorities.
I want to share with you my author’s way of prioritizing, you will not read about this method anywhere else. In my opinion, this is the most efficient way to prioritize, but it has one drawback. It requires knowledge of higher mathematics for the second grade, or rather the ability to multiply and divide.
So imagine that you have to-do list. Let me sketch out an example:
- Shoot a video for the site
- Order a computer desk
- Reply to urgent emails
- Dismantle the box in the closet
Well, that’s about such a list was taken from the ceiling by me. Next, we will evaluate the significance of each case. Significance will consist of three parameters:
- Importance How important is it to do this? Will something terrible happen if you decide not to do it at all? How much depends on its implementation?
- Urgency — How quickly should this be done? Drop everything and just do it? Or if you do it within a week, is it basically normal?
- Complexity — How long will this work take? Do I need to negotiate and interact with other people to make it? To what extent is it emotionally and morally simple or, on the contrary, complex and unpleasant?
Rate all cases on these three parameters on a scale from 1 to 10 in order of Importance-Urgency-Difficulty. In the end, you will end up with something like this:
- Shoot a video for the site 8 6 7
- Order a computer desk 6 2 3
- Reply to urgent emails 7 9 2
- Dismantle the box in the closet 2 2 6
So, all cases are evaluated according to the three criteria Importance-Urgency-Complexity, but so far it will not be possible to prioritize, because it is still not clear which cases to put in the first place, important or urgent? Or maybe the simplest ones first, so that they can be done quickly and so that they do not distract?
To prioritize we assume the ultimate significance of each case.
Significance = Importance * Urgency / Complexity
Multiply Importance by Urgency and divide by Complexity. Thus, at the very top, we will have things that are very important and very urgent, while being very simple. Well, the other way around. And then our list will be like this:
- Shoot a video for the site 8 * 6 / 7 = 6.9
- Order computer desk 6 * 2 / 3 = 4.0
- Reply to urgent emails 7 * 9 / 2 = 31.5
- Disassemble the box in the closet 2 * 2 / 6 = 0.7
I used a calculator to calculate and rounded the values to tenths, such accuracy will be quite enough. So now we see how easy it is to arrange things in order of priority:
- Reply to urgent emails 31.5
- Make a video for the site 6.9
- Order computer desk 4.0
- Dismantle the box in the closet 0.7
The best thing about this procedure is that it no complex decisions required, there is a ready-made algorithm that will always prioritize correctly. Your task is only to adequately assess the importance, urgency and complexity of the case, then technique takes over.
Prioritize in this way with the list that you did in the previous taskto make sure that it is not only simple, but that the final list is quite adequate. In the first places are those things that are really reasonable to do in the first place.