How do you set your priorities?

What you prioritise, in your work and your leisure time, is important. It has a cumulative effect – for good or ill – over time. Therefore identifying and setting your priorities is key.

Every day we make decisions that reflect our values and priorities in life. Where we choose to spend our resources of time, energy and money reflect what we think is valuable.

What does it mean to have priorities?

I started playing the guitar in my teens but I had never really improved beyond a certain (and fairly basic) level.  Why? Quite simply it was because I never practised enough.  It was not that I did not like playing the guitar; it was just that I enjoyed other things more.

In my dreams, I could play like Jimi Hendrix.  In my mind’s eye, I could see myself saving the day at a gig, strolling onto the stage to replace an injured lead guitarist and stunning my friends with amazing solos, my fingers a blur on the fretboard!  But there was a big difference between successful guitarists and me. That difference went beyond just raw talent (of which I had very little).

Guitar legends such as Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton would pick a guitar up at the beginning of the day and would hardly put it down until they went to bed; it is like an extension of their body.  I rarely picked mine up at all.  When practising I got frustrated or bored pretty quickly. If I had the choice between practising for an hour or going to the gym I would generally choose the latter.

fretboard blues fender by johnbatliner

I realised that I did not have the motivation to be the guitarist I dreamed of being because I did not value it enough.  It turned out that this dream was not one worth pursuing.  Therefore, because I needed time to invest in other things I decided to sell my guitars and properly pursue other dreams.  I did not want the good to be the enemy of the great.

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How do you set your priorities?

How do you prioritise your time? Which things should you do and which things should you avoid? What principles or tools do you use to help you with prioritising?

Think about pastimes for a moment.  How many things do you enjoy in your leisure time?  I enjoy doing lots of different things: writing, reading, watching films, drawing, listening to music, keeping fit, playing sports and many more things besides.  As time has gone on and more pressures are applied to my time I decided to take a good look at how I invested the finite time that I have.  It was at this point I realised that there is no such thing as free time; you can spend it at will but you cannot pay to get any more, let alone claim a free top-up.

So I decided I needed to be more focused on how I spent my time. There were several things I read that particularly helped me here. Here are three recommended resources.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Firstly I read Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This has a really practical way of prioritising tasks depending on their urgency and importance (also referred to as the Eisenhower Matrix).  When analysing our time management it can be scary to see how much we spend on unimportant and non-urgent tasks. This can be surfing the web, or reading seemingly urgent (yet unimportant) emails that keep popping into our inbox.  This challenged me so much that I now do not keep my email application open. I check it a maximum of a couple of times a day and prioritise the mail before I respond. I also turn off a lot of notifications on apps.

The Pareto Principle

Secondly, I read about the 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle. This states that generally, 20% of our efforts produce 80% of the results.  In other words, in business, 80% of profits come from 20% of your work. On the negative side, it is likely that 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your clients!  Therefore, by identifying the most useful 20% of what we do (and who we work with) we can maximise that. By reinforcing success we can multiply what we can achieve. By cutting the dross we can also be more efficient.

Outliers: The Story of Success

Thirdly I read Anders Ericsson’s study (referred to in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success) that proposed that becoming really good at anything was more a matter of time than anything else, and around 10,000 hours of effective application was needed to excel at something (by the way, that equates to about 20 hours a week for 10 years – no small investment of time).  I decided that I needed to identify my most effective gifts, time and tasks and concentrate on them.  One simple application of this was how I use my day.  My most productive time is in the morning, between breakfast and lunch.  That is when I plan to do the bulk of my ‘productive’ tasks such as writing.  The afternoon I reserve primarily for meetings, emails and things that require (for me) a slightly lower level of energy and concentration.

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Prioritisation Techniques

From my reading there are several prioritisation techniques and tools that I have adopted. I have written other posts about the ones I use most. You can read them by following the links below:

The Eisenhower Matrix

The SWOT Analysis

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

Need help navigating your journey to success?

I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and assisting them in achieving their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!

The Best Decision-Making Tools That You Should Know About

Decision making is a fact of life, we have a constant barrage of information we need to analyse and choices we have to make. Here are some simple tools to help you.

The SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis is a simple yet effective way of doing a situational analysis and exploring the internal and external influences that are affecting an individual or organisation. SWOT stands for:

  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Opportunities
  • Threats

Strengths and weaknesses are the internal factors; opportunities and threats the external ones. The idea of the SWOT analysis is to keep things simple and concise. All that needs to be done is to record the key considerations under each heading to highlight the critical information that needs to be acted upon. The SWOT analysis is based upon a study done at Stanford University.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix (named after US President Dwight D. Eisenhower) is another simple yet powerful tool but in this case it is used for time management. The process is based upon identifying whether something is either important or not important, urgent or not urgent. The matrix is then made up of four boxes:

  • Important, but not urgent – things that you decide when you will do them
  • Urgent and important – things that should be done immediately
  • Not important, not urgent – things that can be done at a later date
  • Urgent but not important – things that can be delegated to someone else

Items on a to-do list are categorised into the four boxes in order to help prioritise them.

The Conflict Resolution Model

Psychologists have identified that our responses to conflict situations can be categorised in six different ways. Understanding these reactions and being able to identify them in can help to resolve or de-escalate a situation. By looking for the best way to respond good communication and relationships can be restored. The six responses are:

  • Fight. The aggressive response is to try and defeat the cause of the conflict but this has a downside in business and relationships as someone has to become the loser (lose-lose)
  • Flight. Running away is just avoidance; it does not solve the issue so it will still be there at a later date (win-lose)
  • Give up. This is the opposite of the fight response but the result is the same; there is a loser, and therefore this should be avoided (lose-win)
  • Evade responsibility. If someone cannot handle the situation they might give the responsibility to someone else. Bringing in another party generally reduces the chances of a favourable solution. (lose-lose)
  • Compromise. This is when negotiation leads to a solution but one where both parties lose some ground, therefore the conflict is resolved but at a cost to both sides (win-lose/win-lose).
  • Reach a consensus. This is where the conflict is turned into an opportunity where both parties can benefit; therefore it is more productive than a compromise and the best overall result (win-win).

The Making-of Model

This model was developed by The Grove consulting agency and looks at how someone’s past has an influence on their future. It is done by looking back at a specific period of time; be that a project, business venture or important period of life and then analysing it. For each time period the considerations are:

  • The people involved
  • The goals that were set
  • The challenges that were overcome
  • The successes
  • What lessons were learned

This tool can be particularly helpful when crafting a CV.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Developed by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, the hierarchy categorises human needs as:

  • Physiological needs (such as eating, sleeping, sex)
  • Security (shelter, work, health, physical security)
  • Social relationships (friends, community, love, a partner)
  • Recognition (money, status, power)
  • Self-actualisation (faith, self-belief, fulfilling potential, spirituality)

The first three are the basic needs and form the bottom three tiers of the triangle. If these needs are supplied a person no longer considers them. The last two (that form the top two levels of the pyramid) can never really be satisfied and are therefore areas of continual growth.

The Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule)

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, identified that 80% of success and good results come from just 20% of the input. In other words 20% of a company’s customers will be responsible for 80% of its revenue. 80% of a person’s results is down to 20% of their time. The key is identifying the productive 20% in any given situation and focussing on that.

The Belbin Team Model

Meredith Belbin conducted a series of studies and identified nine profiles that were needed in any successful team. They all have particular strengths and weaknesses, which is why all the roles are needed to provide balance. In summary the roles are:

  • Plant – an ideas generator, good at thinking but can find it hard to focus on one thing
  • Co-ordinator – a decision-maker and delegator who takes responsibility but can appear manipulative
  • Shaper – a ‘can-do’ person who overcomes challenges but can be impatient
  • Resource Investigator – someone who looks at possibilities and contacts external to the team; can be over-optimistic
  • Implementer – action-orientated, this person is reliable but can be inflexible
  • Monitor Evaluator – analytical and level headed but can be overly critical
  • Team worker – fosters communication and good relationships internally but can be indecisive
  • Completer Finisher – has very high standards, conscientious but can be too much of a perfectionist
  • Specialist – provide specialist insight and skills but can be too narrow in their thinking

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

Need help navigating your journey to success?

I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and assisting them in achieving their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!