Take all of your tasks and assign each a priority based on this priority matrix from Steven Covey:Īnything that's due soon (or overdue) counts as urgent. Review the tactics below, pick the one that feels right, and then get to prioritizing. There are plenty of ways to prioritize tasks, and some may work better for you than others. With a master list of your deferred tasks in hand, you're ready to start prioritizing. These are all things you need to do that will take longer than two minutes to complete. Once you're finished doing, delegating, and deleting tasks, what you have left are your deferred tasks. If you don't want to forget a task you're deleting, move it to a separate "someday" list of things you want to do if you ever find yourself with time but nothing to fill it with.
So instead of continuing to look at that task and feeling guilty for never getting to it, delete it. You've been looking at the task for years and have never made time for it. Things that are worth deleting include tasks that have been on your list forever that you never get around to or things that provide little value compared to the effort involved to complete them.įor example, say you have a task on your to-do list to go through your filing cabinet, scan all of your documents, and save them to the cloud. Next, delete anything that you really don't need to do. Create a calendar reminder to follow up on it later or add it to a shared project: Getting it off your task list will relieve the pressure of seeing it there all the time.
Assign delegatable tasks to others, and if there's anything you're waiting on others for, get it off your list. Here are a few examples of workflows you can use, or you can create your own automated Zap to get the job done.ĭelegation is another great way to quickly cut down your task list. If you do decide to use your email inbox, Slack, or another app as your master task list, you can use Zapier to automatically move incoming tasks from other sources to your master list. It doesn't matter where you keep your list as long as it contains all of the tasks you need to complete. That place could be a to-do list app, your email inbox, Slack, a paper notebook, or even a memo app on your phone. In order to prioritize your task list efficiently, you need a master to-do list that contains all of the tasks you need to prioritize and complete from all of those sources.īefore you start prioritizing, pick a place for your master to-do list. Your boss sends you an email, you get a Slack message from IT, a bill arrives in the mail, or a coworker asks for a favor in the hallway. First, Consolidate All of Your Tasks Into a Single Source Use the tips and techniques below to help prioritize your tasks. It also means deciding what's the most important task even when everything on your list feels crucial.īut if you can prioritize until you have only one thing to focus on right now, you can't help but get to work. That means deciding not to do things you'd really like to do.
The best way I've found to make sure you complete your tasks is through ruthless prioritization. Checking items off your to-do list is a beautiful thing-but it's also easier said than done.