What are your priorities in life? How do you prioritise things you spend your time, money, and energy on? Which prioritisation method do you employ to make decisions and plan your schedule?

What is prioritisation and what does it mean?

Prioritisation (or prioritization) is about how we order things according to perceived worth. The Oxford Dictionary definition is:

“The action or process of deciding the relative importance or urgency of a thing or things.”

We all have priorities, whether we recognise them or not. If when we do think we know what our priorities are it is good to reflect on our actions to see how well what we think we value, and our behaviours, align. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi:

“Action expresses priorities” – Gandhi

Most revealing of all is when we choose one thing over another as competing priorities demonstrate what we value the most. In other words, our decisions are influenced by our principles.

The challenge of competing priorities: an example of prioritisation

I started playing the guitar in my teens, but I had never really improved beyond a certain 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 quickly. If I had the choice between practising for an hour or going to the gym, I would generally choose the latter.

I realised that even though I loved the guitar, I loved other things more. It was an important lesson in understanding priorities. I am now at peace with my guitar playing (and feel less guilty about my lack of practice) because I understand that my values mean that I will often prioritise other activities. This is not a bad thing, it is just a reflection of my principles.

Values and Priorities: The Magnifying Glass Tool

I think of examining priorities like using a magnifying glass. I tend to carry a magnifying glass on my travels, even if it is just a small one as part of my compass. The magnifying glass helps to enlarge our vision to reveal hidden details. It also amplifies the light we shine on something, so much so that we can even use it to create heat, even fire.

When considering the ‘Why’ question (as part of The Right Questions framework) and exploring our values (our compass) we can see how the examination of priorities (using the magnifying glass) relates to the exploration of our passions (the fire-starter) as discussed previously.

The Quest

Understand your values, unlock your purpose, set your priorities, achieve success. Click here to sign up and get the 1st stage for free!

Understanding your priorities by using the Magnifying Glass Tool

The best way to examine our priorities is to look at the evidence of how we spend our time and money. The Magnifying Glass tool does just that. It is effectively an audit of our schedule and finances. This is because, as journalist and author Germany Kent points out:

“A person’s actions will ALWAYS tell you what their priorities are. People spend their time, money, and energy on what’s important to them.” – Germany Kent

To do the analysis effectively you want to examine at least three months. This helps to even out any anomalies in your usual habits. If you can choose an even longer period then so much the better; the more data you use, the more accurate your conclusions are likely to be.

Examining financial choices

Look at your bank and credit card statements and answer the following questions:

• What are the main areas of spending?
• What proportion goes to each category of spend?
• For the ‘essentials’ (for example spending on housing, food, utilities, tax etc) how does your spending compare with average spending in your location or demographic? If there is a difference, what might this infer about your values?
• Of the money left over, what do you choose to spend your discretionary income on? What do these things (travel, eating out, fashion, music etc) reveal in terms of your prioritisation?
• How much do you save versus spending on pleasures and pastimes? How does this reflect your priorities?
• Is there anything you think you should change to better reflect your principles?

Life hack tip: Money Management

Examining how you spend your money is much easier with the help of some software. Fortunately, many online banking apps can help you easily identify where your money goes and can even create helpful reports. Alternatively, you can download financial information in .csv (or similar file types) for further analysis using a spreadsheet or other application.

Analysing the use of time

Look at your diary, schedule or calendar and answer these questions:

• What are the main uses of your time?
• What proportion goes to each use of time?
• For the ‘essentials’ (for example sleeping, eating etc) how does your time compare with the average time spent in your location or demographic? If there is a difference, what might this infer about your values?
• Of the time left over, what do you do with your spare time? What do these things (watching screens, social media, sports, vacations etc) reveal in terms of your prioritisation?
• How much do you work versus spending time with friends, family or on pastimes? How does this reflect your priorities?
• Is there anything you think you should change to better reflect your principles?

Life hack tip: Time Management

As with money, analysing time is often easier with the use of an online tool. I use my online calendar with colour coding that represents different categories of activity that reflect my life priorities. I use a weekly calendar view and block time out each day, usually in segments of thirty minutes or more. This is my main time management system and it helps me to effectively plan forward, according to my priorities, as well as make it easy to review how I have spent my time.

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically – to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.” – Stephen Covey, First Things First (1994)

We have already seen that values 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.

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!

Analysis paralysis

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 good decisions

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.

“Good is the enemy of Great” Jim Collins

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:

What Are Your Personal Values?

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.

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 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.

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

The Best Prioritizing and Time Management Tools: The Eisenhower Matrix

Do you want to get better at time management and setting priorities? Most of us do and fortunately there are some simple tools and approaches that can help us become more effective at making decisions. The Eisenhower Matrix is one such tool.

What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower matrix is so named because the original concept is accredited to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. I first came across the concept of the Eisenhower matrix in Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, it helped me see ‘to-do’ lists in a whole new way and I have used the system ever since. The Eisenhower matrix is a prioritization tool and therefore a good basis for a time management system. It is most commonly used for business prioritization and project management but is just as good for personal time management and is actually best when used to consider everything you do in life, not just work tasks.

I love the Eisenhower matrix as, similarly to the SWOT analysis it is simple, highly effective and based around a four-quadrant matrix that is easy to remember and use.

Time management is vitally important

Time is our most precious resource. This is not a new idea, some of the oldest phrases that we use are related to time, such as: tempus fugit, time flies; or carpe diem, seize the day.

I asked my boss if I could leave half an hour early the other day. 


He said, ” Only if you make up the time.”


I said, ” OK. It’s 35 past 50.”

Time is finite, but even though we cannot create more time we can become better at time management and make more effective use of the time that we have. We do this but prioritizing things, in other words by putting ‘first things first’ and making sure we focus on what is most important at any given time and then putting our energies and resources behind those activities.

Prioritizing is key to effective time management

Prioritizing is key to better productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Communication and change happen so fast now that you could work around the clock just to keep up with the millions of demands that are fighting for your attention. Email and social media are particularly good at swallowing our time if we are not careful, especially in the age of smart phones that means that we can be connected to the internet and our inbox pretty much anywhere in the world.

The problem is that it is not always that easy to prioritize the things we have to do and that is why it is very helpful to have a prioritization tool to help us. This is where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in.

“The importance of time largely depends upon which side of the bathroom door you are on.”

Are tasks important or urgent?

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Eisenhower matrix works by asking two simple questions of any task we could undertake. The questions are:

• Is it important?
• Is it urgent?

By answering yes or no to these questions we come up with a four quadrant matrix that divides tasks into those that are:

1. Important and urgent – things we need to do now

2. Important and not urgent – things we need to plan to do

3. Urgent but not important – things we should try and delegate

4. Not urgent and not important – things we should avoid doing

This process is helpful as it is very easy to waste time on unimportant tasks or to become distracted. Putting our to-do list through the Eisenhower matrix allows us to be much more focused and productive.

Working out whether something is urgent or not is relatively easy as something that has a time dependent nature is usually self-evident.

It can be harder to work out what is truly important. What we consider important is strongly linked to what we value – and therefore to a degree it is subjective – but there are some things that generally fall in the ‘important’ box.

Some common tasks are listed in the diagram below and this can be used as something of a template for your own to-do list.

How to use the Eisenhower Matrix

To use the Eisenhower method, follow these steps:

1. List: Take a few minutes now to brainstorm and note down the things you have to do
2. Analyse: check the importance, ask:
   • What would happen if the task was not completed?
   • Can the task be delegated?
3. Assess: check the urgency, ask:
   • Does the task have to be done in the next 48 hrs? If so it’s urgent.
4. Assign: Now you have sorted the tasks, assign them to the different quadrants, listed in priority order
5. Schedule: Put the tasks into your diary or planner. Put time in the diary not only for the urgent-important tasks but also plan ahead for the quadrant two tasks and make a plan for how and when you are going to delegate the third quadrant tasks.
6. Action: Start to work through the tasks in priority order
7. Review: Update and re-assess the priorities regularly (for example once a day)

Want to learn more about time management?

If you want to find out some more about time management and increase your productivity then there are some other good resources you can look to.

As I mentioned previously the Eisenhower matrix is a time management tool that Stephen Covey refers to in his book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. I rate this as being in the top ten management and leadership books that I have ever read; it transformed the way I work. You can get a copy by clicking on the image:

Timothy Ferriss – entrepreneur, speaker and author – addresses time management in his book, ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’. Tim is particularly good at applying the 80:20 rule (the Pareto Principle) and he takes time management and outsourcing to the extreme to show how you can achieve a four-hour work week, but you benefit from his life hacks whatever life-work balance you are striving for. You can get a copy here:

You can read more posts on time management and prioritization here:

Three Essential Principles for Prioritisation and Good Decision Making

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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.

Put First Things First

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?

Eat That Frog

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’ 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.

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?

When we set ourselves a goal, we want to stick to it. Equally, as a leader or manager, you have to effectively delegate tasks in order for your team to perform well and to achieve your aim.

But this is simpler in theory than in practice. Often a leader’s’ experience is that – even when you think you have delegated something effectively – you still encounter problems. People may keep coming back and bugging you with questions, or alternatively the task is not done on time, or the job is not completed to the right standard.

To help avoid these issues we can use the acronym ‘SMART’ when delegating work. SMART stands for:

• Specific,
• Measurable,
• Attainable,
• Relevant and
• Time-bound.

This method is accredited to George T. Doran (who first described a version of the acronym in the November 1981 edition of Management Review) and since then the method has evolved to encompass various adaptations of the acronym including having an E (for evaluate) and an extra R (for re-evaluate) to create ‘SMARTER’ goals.

Let’s look at each one in more detail.

What a SMART or SMARTER task actually means

S – Specific

When you give someone a goal it needs to be specific. It needs to be clearly defined and unambiguous. Whether it is a large mission or a smaller task you need to express what success looks like.

Specific is the most useful word here but you could also substitute ‘significant’ or ‘stretching’ in here if you want to make a task more aspirational (such as a ‘BHAG’ – Big Hairy Audacious Goal – promoted by Jim Collins in Good to Great) or use it as a reminder to keep things ‘simple’ or ‘sustainable’.

M – Measurable

Next, the task needs to be measureable. In other words, it needs to be possible to track the progress of completion of the goal. If the task is a big one you might need to break it down into separate activities and set milestones to help monitor progress.

Having specified the goal and broken it down to measure it you have the fundamentals of a plan.

A – Attainable

It is good for goals to stretch us but the ‘A’ here makes us ensure that the task is attainable. We can be bold but the task needs to be achievable. A task can stretch a person or a team (this is healthy) but if you are asking the impossible of someone, it will quickly become de-motivational. As a leader, you set goals to help people grow, not to set them up for failure.

Therefore by asking this question we also consider whether the person in question is properly equipped and supported to achieve the task. If it is our goal then we need to reflect upon our readiness. As a manager, we should be checking that whoever we delegate to has the right training and resources to complete their work.

R – Relevant

The task needs to be relevant to the vision of the team or organisation. Ask yourself, does this piece of work take you a step closer to achieving your overall mission? It is in line with your values? If not you may need to redefine the task.

The work also needs to be relevant to the person you are delegating to. Are they the best person for the job? Is it part of their role and job description? Do they have the relevant skills and experience? Will they be developed by this task?

T – Time Dependent

Having to create a timeline makes you properly assess how long a piece of work should take. Considering time also makes you evaluate your priorities and any dependencies that one task may have upon another.

Deadlines also help to keep people accountable for finishing and stop a piece of work dragging on endlessly. The time element, as with everything else, should be set in agreement with the person you are delegating to so that you all ‘contract in’ to the parameters for the work.

E – Evaluate

Adding in the ‘E’ of ‘Evaluate’ is useful as it brings in the discipline of reviewing how well work has been done. It gives the opportunity for feedback; praise, constructive criticism and learning on behalf of the manager and worker.

For a larger goal you might want to consider these evaluation steps and plan them in along with your overall deadline. Make evaluation time dependent too.

R – Re-evaluate

Decision making and learning happen in a cycle. We recognise this by adding the re-evaluation step here. Re-evaluation is a continuation of the learning from the ‘Evaluate’ phase. Once you have identified lessons at the evaluation phase these should be incorporated in the next stage of the activity. This gives the opportunity to learn and improve as the task progresses.

For example, the first time around the deadline might not have been achieved or the person may have needed more support to achieve the goal. Once the task has been re-set and re-started then the results can be re-evaluated to identify improvement.

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Set SMART goals and SMARTER tasks

Setting SMART goals helps us ensure that goals are actually achieved. It helps take the goal from an idea to a plan that we have committed to.

Equally the SMARTER approach provides a useful checklist and process by which both a manager and employee can agree upon the parameters for a task and be accountable for its outcome. Setting SMARTER tasks helps to build in the reviewing and learning from goals that if often forgotten or neglected.

So what is your next goal or task? Apply the SMART or model and make sure it happens!