The Fine Art of Prioritizing

As you move through your day, expertly "multi-tasking" and juggling a hundred different priorities, how focused do you feel on each task? If you are focused on everything, let me tell you something important- You really aren't focused on anything. I call you a Bowl of Flying Spaghetti, with noodles stretching in every direction all tangled up in a big fat mess. You can't tell where it starts, where it ends, or really where it is going. (Ahem- I am not talking about the really yummy pasta with basil, tomato sauce, and cheesy-goodness you may eat for dinner. I really like that kind of pasta. I am talking about an unappetizing cold pile of bland noodles. Just wanted to set that record straight, especially if you are reading this on an empty stomach.) However, if you focus on the right things and only one or two of those at a time, you are more like a direct laser, honing in on the highest-value activities and driving them to completion with your superhero powers as you flex your impressive effectiveness muscles. Today, I want to teach you how to master the laser.

If you read my previous blog post, you should have a foundational knowledge of Value-Based Thinking, including an understanding of what exactly value is and how to apply it as carried out in your action plan. Your action plan should have aided you in eliminating non-value-adding activities, freeing up your time to focus on your high-value projects, including ways in which to further maximize those benefits. Yay for free mental space!! With this foundation, we will now begin laying some building blocks. This post's building block will be learning the art of prioritizing. Now that you have whittled down your projects to the most beneficial ones, you must prioritize those activities in line with certain guidelines, and decide which to tackle first. This can be daunting. You also must know how to continuously rank new actions that come up, and manage both long-term and short-term priorities. You will learn to say "no" or "not right now". Along the way, you will mold yourself into a direct laser, instead of bland unappetizing flying spaghetti.

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Why Is Prioritizing Important?

Why is prioritizing so important? Let us consider two different people. Alice and Grant. Alice starts 5 new projects each week, in the process finishing none of them and barely working on the other 15 projects she had begun in previous weeks. Alice feels scatterbrained and stressed. She also lacks confidence in her abilities to deliver, because she sees very few clear outcomes from her enormous amounts of effort. She really does work very hard, harder than most others even, but where are the elusive results?? Alice is flying spaghetti. She is a large mass of noodles spreading out as far as can be, but not really targeting anything in particular. She contacts a few objects, but misses most. The result? A sloppy mess. Grant is on a different spectrum. Grant only has 5 projects on his plate total. He doesn't take on additional projects unless they outweigh the value of his current ones, and if he does, he places them at a lower priority. Grant finishes one project every 1-2 weeks. At the end of 5 weeks, Grant has finished (this is the KEY word) 3 high-value projects that have all begun bearing fruit- the sweet returns of investment for his time and his company's money. His momentum compounds exponentially over time, creating a massive snowball of returns. Grant is a sleek laser beam. (At this point I'd really very much like to draw you a graph showing exponential growth to illustrate how powerful it is, but since I've already reached my max nerdiness allowed per post with two other graphical depictions below, I will refrain. Suffice it to say that exponential growth is MUCH more powerful than linear growth. Google it if interested.) Alice on the other hand has 20 projects she is "working on" at the end of 5 weeks, but has finished none of them. She sees zero return on her investment of time and effort, and is frazzled to boot. To be excellent at your vocation- and in LIFE, you absolutely must learn to be a laser, and a major part of this is learning the art and process of prioritizing.

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The Blueprint

You should by now be comprehending the power and usefulness of prioritizing. If not, give yourself a strong and sturdy facepalm, and go back to reread the first few paragraphs of this post. Now, we cover the blueprint for HOW to prioritize. To start, I recommend downloading the Prioritizing Like a Pro template from my Downloads page.

Long-Term and Short-Term Lists

To be effective at prioritizing, you will need both short-term and long-term actions that you keep separate. Your short-term list is reserved for what you want to focus on within the next day or week, while your long-term list is a compilation of all of your projects that you wish to keep on your radar. You should prioritize both continuously, pulling projects off of your long-term list to place on your short-term list as you complete actions and make room. I like the analogy of a painter to illustrate this concept. A painter has a large bucket of paint with which he will paint the entire room. However, as he works on each section of the room, he carries a smaller pan with him that has a dab of paint. As he uses up the paint in his pan, he returns to the larger bucket to refill. This is comparable to how your short-term and long-term lists should work. In the handout you've downloaded, you'll see tips for creating and managing both lists, as well as a template for your short-term list. I encourage you to take a first pass at filling out the template before moving on to the next section.

Priority Plotting

If you've completed the template, you should have the following data for each of your activities: due date, time requirement, and value added.

It is a little tricky to prioritize with 3 different variables. To help you in juggling these 3 variables and ranking based off of them, I've developed the following tools to help. Obviously this will include some form of tables or graphing, because I'm the nerdy engineering calculator type. As you get to know me, you'll be less and less surprised by this. Now if you've started sweating and your heart is beating faster at the mere mention of tables or graphs, do not worry! Challenge yourself. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. That is the only way to grow and change. That is a subject for a future post. These tools are not complicated, but are meant to help you develop the habit of effective prioritizing. Once you've developed the prioritizing muscles, you'll need these tools less and less.

Step 1

Plot and rank your activities based on time requirement to complete and due date. Activities with the highest time requirement but the shortest due date should be given high time priority (A). Likewise, activities with the lowest time requirement and the longest due date should be given lowest time priority (D).

Step 2

Plot and rank your activities based on your A-D time assignments from Step 1 (a combination of time requirement and due date) in addition to the value added (this is the outcome of reading the Value-Based Thinking post), with A being highest value and C being lowest value. Those activities with the highest value addition and highest time assignment will be your #1 priority. These are the green boxes in the matrix. Those activities with a D time assignment and low value will be your last priority. These are the red boxes in the matrix.

Feel free to modify these plots and tables to make it fit-for-purpose for you. Take some time to sit and think about the meaning behind them. The cutoffs and rankings are only to show the approach and shouldn't be used as hard and fast rules. These are a starting point for you in training your mind to think logically, enabling you to juggle multiple variables and activities gracefully and effectively. Once you mastered the mindset, you may not even need to go through the motion of graphing or plotting. Until then, I recommend employing these tools to reinforce the concepts.

Saying No

We've come to my last blueprint item for prioritizing. To achieve success in prioritizing, you will need to learn to say "no" or "not right now". This can prove to be exceedingly difficult, especially if the person who is asking is crafty at persuasion or pressuring. If done incorrectly, you can also offend colleagues and damage the working relationships. Be especially careful if a higher level manager is requesting something of you. I recommend always going to your boss first in these cases. If you do not say no at all in your daily work, you will find yourself at the mercy of the wide-ranging priorities of different people, which can be vastly incorrect or different from yours. This will quickly make you ineffective at creating value - The direct antithesis of what we are trying to achieve. This same concept applies in virtually every area of life, not just at work. I recommend jotting down a few responses to have in your head to pick out when the time arises and you are pressured to do something that may not be in line with your priorities. Attempt to validate the other person's concerns first, and then explain your standpoint and logic. Here are some examples:

"I understand that you are under a deadline for this project and that is very stressful. However, I have 2 other projects that I'm also under a deadline for and that are a high priority for me and my team. Is there someone else you may be able to lean on for help in this case?"

"This sounds like an interesting project! However, I'm not sure how it fits in line with my current priorities. Let me check with my boss and get back with you?"

"I am very excited to partner with you on this activity. However, due to other activities I have on my plate at the moment that I must finish, the earliest I can start your request is week after next."

Play It On Repeat

Now that you've been briefed on the art of prioritizing, you must apply it day in and day out. Practice it. Make it a habit. Play it on repeat. You will find yourself getting more and more effective at it, in the process making yourself invaluable and a strong deliverer for your team, for your business, or for your family. You will be one step closer to achieving excellence!

© 2017 by The Process Maven