8 Practical Tips for Always Knowing Your Priorities

This post is part of my How to Actually Get Things Done Series, which covers these four principles for productivity:

1. Take control of your time
2. Know your priorities
3. Minimize distractions
4. Take time off

This post digs into principle #2. Check out the other posts in this series:

• 4 Practical Principles for (Actually) Getting Things Done
• 4 Practical Tips for Taking Control of Your Time

It’s easy to feel unfocused and unproductive when you don’t know what you should be focusing on. One common experience I’ve observed is feeling like there are so many things to do and not knowing where to start, or procrastinating on the thing that really matters by doing other less important things. You need to have a crystal clear view of your priorities. Everything cannot be high priority because you cannot do everything at the same time.

Image credit: https://giphy.com/gifs/latewithlilly-lilly-singh-a-little-late-with-l1Ut8GXbls40BChQrs

Let’s dig into some practical tips for always knowing your priorities and how to manage them:

1. Get clear on your priorities.

• If you don’t have a sense for what you need to be doing today, tomorrow, this week, etc, then you need to identify your priorities. You should be constantly aware of the most impactful ways to spend your time.
• Communicate with your manager/team/stakeholders about your priorities, to align on expectations around urgency, importance and timing of the tasks. Additionally, ask questions to uncover if you’re missing anything.
• When something new pops up, weigh it against the things that are already on your to-do list.

2. Document your priorities in one place.

• Find a tool that works for you to document and organize your priorities.
• Keep all your priorities in the same place so you always know where to quickly find them.
• Some people love their pen and paper, but digital tools offer much more flexibility in allowing you to quickly update the order of your priorities when they shift.
• Some popular digital tools are Microsoft To-Do (my tool of choice, formerly known as Wunderlist), Notion, Trello, and Todoist.
• When looking for a new tool, try it out for a week and if it doesn’t work for you, try something else. There are so many tools out there! Beware of experimenting with new tools as a form of procrastination, though!

3. Organize your priorities by weighing tasks against each other.

• There must be an order to your tasks, and in order to do that tasks need to be weighed against each other. Things to think about:

Is there a deadline associated with this task? Is that deadline flexible?

Are other people depending on this task to be done to do their work?

Which tasks will yield the most impact?

Which tasks align with my team/colleague’s/company’s priorities?

What is the impact of doing this task before this other task?

• Reorder your tasks based on what needs to be done first so you know where to focus your energy.
• You may be adjusting your priorities within a given day, as they might change based on your capacity that day or because of external factors.

4. Only focus on a small set of priorities at once.

• My great big recommendation here is to only focus on what needs to be done today. Don’t look at a giant list of everything you need to do in the next 3 weeks because that’s overwhelming and unhelpful.
• My next great big recommendation is to separate tasks into multiple to-do lists that reflect a different time horizon. It can be helpful when tasks for today, tomorrow, next few days, next week, next month, next 6 months are not all in the same place.
• Be realistic about what you can do in a given day or week. Consider what has to be done today and whether or not those things can realistically get done, given your calendar and capacity for the day.

A snapshot into how I organize my priorities within different time horizons in the Microsoft To Do app (which I have on my laptop and phone).

5. Break down big tasks into smaller ones.

• Big tasks can feel daunting and sometimes we put them off because we don’t even know where to begin. Increase focus and be realistic with planning your time by breaking down a big task into smaller tasks.
• Break down the big task into the actionable steps you’ll need to take in order to complete it. Then, you only need to focus on one small task at a time!

It’s easy for me to procrastinate on the large task here, but much easier to start by just focusing on the first smaller task.

6. Consider if recurring events or reminders are working for you.

• Oftentimes we end up ignoring recurring events or reminders, and they just end up adding visual noise to our lives.
• If you have a priority that you want to be regularly reminded of, consider intentionally scheduling it on your to-do list or calendar for that day or week.

7. Plan for tomorrow at the end of each day.

• A great way to set yourself up for success for tomorrow is to take 5–10 minutes today to plan how you’ll (realistically) use your time tomorrow.
• Cross-check your calendar with your priorities and get a sense for what tomorrow looks like.

8. Build a habit around checking your priorities.

• Ideally, you are able to build a habit around regularly checking your to-do list so that you always know your priorities.
• At the very least, checking it first thing in the morning before you open your email/Slack/[insert other distracting thing here] is going to help you have a clear picture of what you need to get done today.

I hope you found these tips helpful and that you’re able to feel more in control of your to-do list and have a better understanding of your priorities — whether at work or at home. Next week we’ll dive into how to minimize distractions.

I’m always happy to chat about time management, productivity and prioritization! Hit me up on twitter @alikrausman.