8 Strategies for Prioritizing Tasks to Boost Productivity

To-Do lists are great. They help keep you from distractions and get things done every day. However, creating a To-Do list alone is not enough. Without proper prioritization, chasing after To-Dos can get overwhelming and lead to burnout.

Not all tasks on your To-Do list are created equal. If you force yourself to do all of them at the end of the day just to feel accomplished, you will soon find yourself exhausted and even avoidant of work altogether.

This is where prioritizing is important. Proritizing keeps your To-Do list lean and makes sure each item helps you make progress towards what’s truly important.

In this guide, we’re laying out nine useful tips and strategies for managing your priorities daily.

1. Write everything down in one to-do list

Dump all your To-Dos in one master list. Include all tasks regardless of whether they are personal To-Do lists or work items. Everything from doing a load of laundry to creating a meeting presentation should go into this list.

This is a useful approach if you have a lot of different tasks and want to get an overview of everything that needs to be done. Having a complete picture of your tasks can help you to prioritize effectively and ensure that nothing important is overlooked.

For this step, you can use a simple pen and paper or you can take advantage of apps to create a task dump.

2. Evaluate the value of each task

Define what’s important to you. Having a big picture goal as your point A is always helpful when deciding the value of an action. If a particular task does not contribute to an overall goal, then that task should take a lower priority compared to one that do.

These types of tasks are the ones that, when accomplished, will really give you that satisfying progress that brings you closer to your goals.

3. Highlight urgent tasks

Time-sensitive tasks are always going to be in the top to middle part of your To-Dos. They are also most likely going to be important so it’s useful to not only take note of them but also to know exactly when these deadlines are.

The deadlines will dictate their order in your list. They will also help you determine if the task requires any other prerequisite actions and decide whether or not to delegate this task to someone else.

Keeping track of deadlines using an analog planner can be a little hard to manage. To save time, look into some calendar softwares and apps for staying on top of everything urgent.

Related: Build Good Habits by Learning to Prioritize

4. Prioritize tasks accordingly

Not all tasks are created equal. To be able to determine the order of your priorities, can use the following criteria.

Tasks are prioritized according to:

• Impact/Importance (Does this contribute to my big goal/s?)
• Immediacy of deadlines (Is this urgent?)
• Needs of others (Is the completion of this task dependent on someone else?)
• Length (How long will this task take me to complete?)
• Potential task rewards (What do I get from accomplishing this task?)

 5 Ways to Prioritize Tasks

There are many ways to whittle down a long task list into a lean one. Review the following methods, try them out, and see which fits your needs best.

Method 1: Using the Eisenhower Matrix

The matrix is a simple and effective tool that helps individuals to categorize their tasks based on their importance and urgency. The matrix consists of four quadrants, each representing a different level of importance and urgency.

The first quadrant contains tasks that are both urgent and important and require immediate attention. Tasks on this quadrant should be added to the top of your list. The second quadrant contains tasks that are important but not urgent and should be scheduled for a later time. The third quadrant contains tasks that are urgent but not important and can be delegated to someone else. Finally, the fourth quadrant contains tasks that are neither urgent nor important and should be eliminated or postponed indefinitely.

Method 2: MITs Method

The Most Important Tasks (MITs) method involves selecting two or three tasks that are crucial for achieving one's goals or that have a significant impact on one's work or personal life.

The idea behind this method is to focus on completing the most important tasks before moving on to less critical ones. By identifying and prioritizing these essential tasks, individuals can ensure that they are using their time and energy efficiently and effectively.

The MITs method can be particularly helpful for individuals who struggle with procrastination or who have difficulty managing their time, as it provides a clear and structured approach to task prioritization.

Method 3: Pick one task and focus on that

This approach involves selecting the most important task, often based on the Pareto Principle that suggests that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts, and focusing on it until it is completed.

This method works great for chronic procrationators who struggle with completing even simple tasks.

Method 4: The Ivy Lee Method

The Ivy Lee Method is a simple and effective approach to task prioritization that was developed by Ivy Lee, a productivity consultant in the early 20th century.

Here’s a step-by-step process of the Ivy Lee Method.

Step 1: At the end of your work day, list down 6 tasks that you should accomplish the next day.

Step 2: Prioritize the tasks on this list in order of importance.

Step 3: The next day, work on the first task on your list, focus on that task until you complete it. Only then can you start working on the next item on the list.

Step 4: Repeat this process until you’ve finished all the tasks in your list.

Step 5: Any uncompleted tasks left for the day should be carried over to your new list of six tasks for the next day.

Step 6. Repeat.

Method 5: Brian Tracy's ABCDE Method

At times, it can be tricky to differentiate between multiple high-priority tasks. If you have this issue, try Brian Tracy's ABCDE Method.

Here's how it goes.

Step 1: Label each item on your master list from A to E (with A as the highest priority and E as the lowest)

Step 2: For each task labeled A, order them from 1 to 5 (or more, if needed) with 1 being the most important and 5 the least important

At the end of the process, you should have an ordered list that you can then further whittle down into an even leaner list.

5. Avoid multitasking

Instead of working on two or three different tasks simultaneously, try to focus on finishing one task first before moving on to another.

When faced with two high-difficulty tasks, choose one instead of trying to finish them all. Doing so ensures that you can still make progress on a high-value task without sacrificing its quality. Doing otherwise can compromise the quality of your output and when done repeatedly, lead to burnout.

This is backed by a study involving people on high-difficulty tasks. They found that participants who held high-power positions are more likely to opt to work on one single goal while people in low-power positions are more likely to continue getting everything done.

Related: Build Good Habits by Learning to Prioritize

6. When working on a long to-do list, do the easy ones first — and fast

If you really don’t feel like working on hard tasks due to procrastination, try to get through the easy ones first but do them fast. If not, chances are, your tendency to wander will get the best of you. Finishing the easy tasks first will give you the confidence boost to start working on bigger, more difficult ones.

7. Make sure each task on your to-do list is as simplified as possible

If a certain task involves multiple steps to complete, break it down into component parts and add each of those individually into your master list. This sees to it that you don’t miss any important steps and that you make progress towards completing this complicated objective. It also helps you avoid getting overwhelmed by one task alone and sacrificing other important tasks on your list.

8. Overestimate how long a task will take

When planning and preparing your To-Do list for the day or the following day, give yourself an adequate amount of time to complete each task. By overestimating, instead of underestimating your capacity to complete the tasks within a particular period, you are more likely to tick off all items on your task list for that particular day, which is a much better feeling than carrying over unfinished items to the next day’s To-Do list.

Conclusion

Managing tasks can become a task in itself. So make sure you have an optimized process for it. Using the abovementioned tips and strategies, you can now start testing them out to see which ones work for you. And while you're at it, take advantage of a life management tool to stay on top of everything important. Check out TaskSpur to create, track, and manage all your personal, professional, health, and finance goals in one place.

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References:

Schmid, P. C., Mast, M. S., & Mast, F. W. (2015). Prioritizing—The Task Strategy of the Powerful? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1008525