Task prioritization is easy
Most of the time your success does not depend on your hard work but on your task prioritization skills, to know how and why? Please focus on the below content…
With one small mistake in task prioritization, you will lose one big contract with the company or you will lose one good relationship or friendship.
Important v/s Urgent Tasks:
Most of the people I noticed in my career are unsuccessful! Not because they are not working! They really work very hard and are dedicated too, but they are not aware of how to balance Important v/s urgent things when dealing with tasks.
Yes, in the below table focus on QI makes progress in your profession, you should be aware of these things, what is important, what is not important, what is urgent and what is not urgent. Remember QII looks not urgent but it’s very important.
Sometimes in business, Important and/or Urgent tasks are not based on your views or understanding. It’s based on your superior or manager's views. Because you are not aware of their commitments.
Why QII is so important in the above table?
Here is an example: My Boss Prabhakar [Previous manager] came to my marriage. Marriage venue was 200 kilometres away from my work place, the night of the next day he had to travel to America for a business trip. My marriage is not important to him, if he compares with personal and professional reasons. Still he attended my marriage, because he knows the value of relationships and its importance.
That made me give more respect to him and I become a more dedicated worker than earlier. As my boss had lots of love and trust on me, he treated me or my event as important. That’s why one should focus on QII in the above table.
Let me give another example:
Assume you are working in a cable company and your job is cable installations. Assume tomorrow you need to install 2 cables in an area where your mother stays in. Now say your mother has invited you on the same day. Plan your day in such a way that you are installing 2 cables in that area and you visit your mother, have lunch and have a good time with her. Later, plan to attend the next activities. This is another example of QII.
Simply don’t always focus on the table to give priorities, use your common sense and adapting skills. Else you may lose good relationships in professional and personal life or miss things delivery.
To Do list:
Keep a habit of maintaining “To Do list” and make sure you are addressing all the items listed in your “To Do list”. Everyday is dynamic and unknown. Things will change, new things will come, new problems may arise, and so on. In those cases, your work hours will get scattered on different activities. No matter what are the dynamic activities you are addressing or dealing with, you should keep your “To do list” in mind. And based on the importance and priorities, you should get involved in other unplanned activities. If you are not addressing any of your “To Do list” items on that day, make sure you inform to related stakeholders with the reasons for the delay in delivery.
FYI: I have a habit of maintaining this “To Do list”, I maintain this “To Do list” from past 13+ years, this is giving me a great level of clarity in dealing with tasks or prioritization. This also helps me to understand and track my productivity or achievements of the day.
Decisions making on First and Last:
If you’re not skilled enough to take a decision in first things and last things to do, it will hurt you and your entire team!
Decision making skill in task prioritization is very important, else you go crazy! here’s how one should not do - my grandfather team went to 9 days Mysore Dussehra event. They got excited to see so many shops and tools in street sales. One of person purchased bullock cart axle on the first day by thinking that, this is not available in his hometown. Another one purchased one big copper pot which was cheaper than at home town. Another 8 days in that trip they were carrying those on their head and shoulder and visited all the places and events.
Most of the tourist people were yelling at these guys as they were disturbing their event views by holding such big tools on them.
Finally, when they returned back to home (Village), if anyone asked about their Mysore trip, they only remembered that pain of holding those things on their shoulder and heads. Their Mysore trip became a painful eternal memory.
If you are poor in decision making on first and Last things to take up. You too commit the same mistake of what they did 100 years back.
What is the need of Task Analysis?
Most of the time you feel stressed when you get assigned with a new task or more tasks. I look things this way; no one in the world will ask you to work 24 hours in a day. It happened to one of my colleagues, in the morning he came running to my desk and said, my manager has assigned me four new tasks. How can I deal with it? He had so much stress and was frustrated with the manager's new assignments.
I just asked him to calm down, I took pen and started writing 4 tasks and asked him, some details on the tasks; then he said;
Task1: Requires 1 or 2 hours of time to complete.
Task2: Is dependent on others, he can only start after they complete the first part of it. That first part completion may take a day, so he needs to ask them to work on it first. And wait for the next day to get that work for him to proceed. (this only requires follow-up and it may take less than 10mins)
Task3: Not doable by his current experience and needs to delegate it to someone who is aware of that in another team. (follow-up is required in completing it, and it may take another 10 or 20 minutes to follow up)
Task4: This task is doable and he may take 4 hours of time to complete.
By Consolidating all the tasks and going task by task, we got to know that it may take him 6 to 7 hours of time on the current day. When he saw all together, he was stressed a lot and afraid of it. Not only he, many of you might have experienced similar situations. Take the pen and paper, conduct analysis. If you have more tasks which require more than 8 hours, use prioritization techniques and be informed on what you are performing today and what not.
How to deal with tasks inflow:
With my experience in seeing tasks and study of the related references: I recommend you to see the assignment or work in 3D fashion, below diagram is self-explanatory, just focus the flow with YES and NO answers when dealing with tasks…
1D - Do it.
2D - Differ it.
3D - Delegate it.
Remember, don’t keep 2 minutes or less than 2 minutes tasks till the end of the day. Address them as soon as you receive. For other tasks which take hours and doable, take them based on the priorities and importance of the delivery. Delegation and sending feedback are very important and crucial in business.
