Setting Priorities and Creating To-Do Lists

Now I have Goals—What’s Next

Setting Priorities and Creating To-Do Lists

As a leader you have more great ideas than you know what to do with them.  Have you ever had a day where you couldn’t stop thinking about all the new and great things you wanted to do, only to wake up the next day wondering what you were going to accomplish?  Many times all the great ideas you have tend to fade away as other items take their place in your “Priority Queue”.  While many people find it difficult to stop and write things down, there is such a great benefit to writing your ideas down, prioritizing them, and then creating a list of items that you must get done before you move on to the next GREAT idea.
In our last BLOG, we talked about changes that needed to be made.  Well, for many of us, the art of time management has been one of those that we have dealt with the majority of our lives.  From school work to our professional lives, being able to properly prioritize has made the difference in succeeding or not.  Start with some critical questions:

• What is a priority?
• A priority is anything that you feel must be accomplished as a “baseline” for future activities.  It might be a major item, or it might be a small but critical item.  This is for you to determine, just keep in mind that if you are not sure that the item is a priority, it probably isn’t.
• Are all priorities created equally?
• No.  There are priorities, that if not done first could impact and create additional work.  Make sure you sit and determine what things are first.  Like Steven Covey wrote, “first things first”.  You must TAKE YOUR TIME as you set your priorities.  You will be thankful that you did.  Remember, no one will see your list but you, (until you want them to) so scratch out, erase, and replace until you are confident that the right order has been determined
• Prioritizing your priorities
• Like we just said, getting the order right is critical.  Having said that, make sure that your list is complete.  Nothing could be more frustrating than to been making great progress on your list and then realizing that you did not have everything down, or that if you would have done step 7 before step 2 you could have saved yourself important time.  Again, TAKE YOUR TIME.
• Developing a system of starting and ending your day with your priority list
• Whether you call it a priority list or a to-do list, one of the most critical steps is to ensure that you begin and end every day reviewing and renewing your list.  Don’t get caught up in the “that’s not important” game.  Spend 15 – 30 minutes every day reviewing and renewing your list to ensure that you are on track and making progress.  Think of it this way, if you were taking a long trip to a place you have never been, but refused to use a map to determine the best way to get there, you would be driving.  But with a map you are headed toward a destination.  Leaders who do this and hone their skills find that they save up to 60 minutes per day by using this technique.  Brian Tracy refers to this as the Golden Hour.
• Having only one list (do not create different priority lists for different projects)
• As leaders typically do, it is going to be very easy for you to start to separate your priorities into separate “projects” and thus, you will start to create a list and another list and another.  Don’t do it.  As we just mentioned, if you begin and end each day “reviewing and renewing” your priority list, you will find that you won’t need separate lists, you will simply decide that what was not as critical yesterday is more critical for tomorrow.  Change the list’s order and tomorrow you will be able to work on that item.  Remember that your list should be the ONLY list you are working from.
• Celebrating when you have completed major milestones
• Take time whenever you have finished a major item to celebrate.  It does not need to be a big celebration.  It might only be a check mark on your list.  But you need to acknowledge to yourself that you are making progress.

When you start making your list, don’t be surprised if it more difficult than you thought it would be.  Keep in mind, that most things in your business that are important don’t come naturally.  If they do, you may not be doing it right.