Why is prioritising the key to good decision making?
We have already seen, in the section on values, that our principles are at our centre and act as a compass to help guide us. This guidance becomes very practical in decision-making as our values help us prioritise.
Living in an age of choice
Being able to prioritise well, and therefore able to make effective decisions, is of ever-increasing importance today. Never before has there been so much information or so many choices for us to wade through on a daily basis.
In former times, people (especially academics) were valued for what they knew; the experts in their field were the gatekeepers to knowledge on any given subject area. But that power base has been somewhat eroded in recent years and the value of being a person who just ‘knows things’ has been diminished. What is the main reason for that? In short: the Internet. In the age of the Internet, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before in the history of mankind.
Internet by Birgerking via Flickr
We also have more choice than ever before. A supermarket is a dangerous place to go without a plan. Even with two simple staples, rice and sugar, you could fill a whole trolley with the various alternatives on offer in the aisles. When you go into a coffee shop you can no longer simply ask for a coffee; such a statement would bring consternation for the barista, impatience for other customers and shame for you! We all know that we need to practise our order while in the queue. We need to say “extra-large-double-shot-skinny-soya-latte to go” with confidence!
But all this choice and information presents a new challenge; people are overloaded with information and paralysed by the number of choices available. The challenge today is not about knowing things so much as knowing how to sift, analyse and usefully apply the tornado of data that sweeps around us. Want a lesson in irony? Type ‘information overload’ into a search engine and see how many results it churns out in a fraction of a second!
“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” Mitch Kapor
Our values aid us in the battle against information overload and potential analysis paralysis. This is important as time is spent over decisions and there is an opportunity cost even just in deciding to spend time deliberating an option. Many people today will spend hours pouring over the next gadget to buy and yet fail to give time to decisions that really matter.
Making a decision also relieves stress. The number of decisions we need to make, coupled with the importance of many of these decisions, can put us under real pressure. By reducing the number of decisions we have to make and actually committing, we can release pressure and reduce our stress levels. Introducing pre-planned systems, processes and delegation can also help.
One of the challenges that make decisions hard is that we are generally choosing between several good things. It is not just a choice between one good and one bad thing. This brings in a new challenge. As Jim Collins points out, the ‘good can be the enemy of the great’. Our limited time and resources can be used up on lots of good things but we could still end up missing the best thing.
Therefore prioritising is of critical importance. If we are going to achieve our best then we are going to have to make the right decisions. Our values will help to guide us and if you want help working out your values read:
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.
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!
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.
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 EffectivePeople. 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.
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:
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.
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!
How to Prioritise Tasks: Do the Most Important Thing First
How do you think you could best prioritise your tasks and workload? What are the best techniques and tools for prioritisation? How can you prioritise to improve efficiency and productivity?
I have a portfolio career and therefore am constantly organising and prioritising events in my calendar, to ensure that I am on top of all my various commitments. Therefore it is no surprise that I have spent a lot of time studying and experimenting with numerous prioritisation techniques.
If you search like I have you will find that there are many strategies for prioritising and tips on time management, so many that it can be overwhelming. Which approach is the best one? But, if you look carefully, you will see they all boil down to the same thing.
Whether you follow the advice of leaders such as Steve Jobs and Dwight Eisenhower or read business experts such as Stephen Covey, Tim Ferris, Brian Tracey or David Allen you will see there is a common theme, even if techniques might differ. Don’t have time to get through all that material? Don’t worry, as I have done that for you, I can give you the executive summary!
So, what is the result? The not-so-secret, irreducible truth at the heart of prioritising is simple:
Do the most important task first.
You might have been expecting something more but it really is that simple. Let’s go back to a few of the sources so you can see what I mean, then we can put it into practice.
If you want to be truly productive then you need to prioritise effectively. It is a constant decision-making process, working out what to do next.
“Put first things first” – Stephen R Covey
Putting first things first is one of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It means don’t check your email or your phone until you have achieved that important task!
Most people have a long list of things they need to do. The trick is then to prioritise that list, not to just start at the top and then work down.
Tools such as the Eisenhower Matrix, made popular by Stephen Covey, can help you work out which tasks are important and which are urgent. Alternatively, using the Pareto Principle (a favourite of Timothy Ferris) you can spot and leverage the 20% of work that will get you 80% of the results.
If you set your priorities in this way, it means however the rest of the day goes, you will have done the most important thing first.
But what if you are still struggling?
Be More Steve
The theory is simple, but the practice is often hard. How do you work out what to do when you are feeling overwhelmed? This is the same challenge that Steve Jobs faced, as he said:
“Prioritization sounds like such a simple thing, but true prioritization starts with a very difficult question to answer, especially at a company with a portfolio approach: If you could only do one thing, what would it be? And you can’t rationalize the answer, and you can’t attach the one thing to some other things. It’s just the one thing.”Steve Jobs
So, what you need to do is ask yourself the same question that Steve Jobs used:
If you could do only one thing, what would it be?
We should always focus on the one thing we can do, on any given day, that takes us closer to success. Finished a task? Ask the same question again and make sure you are doing the next important thing.
If we continue to challenge ourselves with this question we can all Be More Steve and be more focussed and productive with our work time.
Ok, so you have identified the top thing on your to-do list. But what if you don’t like the look of the most important task?
The most important and impactful thing you need to do may well be a task that you don’t want to do. It could be a difficult conversation you have been avoiding. Maybe it’s that deadline you keep pushing back on. There is a good chance that work that you have been avoiding is the task you most need to tackle.
If that is the case, there is a danger you will – consciously or unconsciously – employ evasion techniques to avoid doing that work. You might convince yourself that it is not really the most important thing or just allow yourself to get distracted.
Stop. Take a deep breath, hold your nose and…eat that frog!
The phrase Eat that Frog was coined by leadership guru Brian Tracy. It is the discipline of doing the unpleasant task first to get it out of the way. The rationale is that if you have to eat a frog you might as well get it over with first, and fast! The same goes for unpleasant work. There is nothing for it but to get on with it, suck it up, then move on.
YouTube Video: How to prioritise tasks effectively
The Right Questions Prioritisation Tool: Use PAD for good time-management
So prioritising is simple in theory, but it is hard to do in practice. And once you have identified your most important task it does not stop there. You have looked ahead and identified the most important tasks; now what? This is where effective prioritisation meets good time management.
Having read a lot of books and played with various techniques I have developed a system that works for me, even when juggling multiple roles and responsibilities.
To manage my time I follow the 3 steps in the PAD acronym:
Prioritise
Assess
Diarise or Do
Let’s look at these in a little more detail:
1. Prioritise
First identify your priority tasks. Using something like the Eisenhower matrix, organising tasks into what is either urgent and/or important can be really helpful at this stage.
2. Assess
Once you have worked out your priority tasks you can assign an amount to each. It takes practice to accurately estimate how long an activity will take. One top tip is that I very rarely assign less than 15 minutes to any task, even if it is a simple phone call. More often I give 30 minutes to an hour for each major task. This may sound like a lot for some pieces of work but it builds in the time it takes to switch between tasks or deal with interruptions.
3. Diarise or Do
Finally, the task needs to go in the calendar, or, if it is truly both important and urgent then it should be started as soon as possible.
Top tip: use different colours for different sorts of tasks in your calendar. For example, I have different colours for each of my work roles, and others for family, fitness and other non-work priorities. This helps to achieve a balance between various priorities.
3 steps to better prioritisation and time management
So follow the 3 steps of PAD to prioritise your time. It is not just helpful practically, psychologically this is helpful too. Going through these steps brings clarity and commitment. Clarity, because the process forces you to properly define and organise what needs to be done. Commitment, because once in the calendar, it is more likely you will accomplish the goal.
PAD will help to ensure that your priority tasks get done. If you continue to use it to review your calendar (I do this on a daily basis) it will also help identify other engagements you may need to change, or tasks you need to say no to, in order to achieve your most important work.
So, the question is, now that you have read this, what is the next most important thing you need to do today?
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.
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!