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Time
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Prioritization
Making best use of your time and resources
Prioritization is the essential
skill you need to make the very best use of your own efforts
and those of your team.
It is particularly important when time is limited and demands
are seemingly unlimited. It helps you to allocate your time
where it is most-needed and most wisely spent, freeing you
and your team up from less important tasks that can be attended
to later. or quietly dropped.
With good prioritization (and careful management of deprioritized
tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress,
and move towards a successful conclusion. Without it, you'll
flounder around, drowning in competing demands.
Simple Prioritization
At a simple level, you can prioritize based on time constraints,
on the potential profitability or benefit of the task you're facing,
or on the pressure you're under to complete a job:
- Prioritization based on project value or profitability is
probably the most commonly-used and rational basis for prioritization.
Whether this is based on a subjective guess at value or a sophisticated
financial evaluation, it often gives the most efficient results.
- Time constraints are important where other people are depending
on you to complete a task, and particularly where this task
is on the critical path of an important project. Here, a small
amount of your own effort can go a very long way.
- And it's a brave (and maybe foolish) person who resists his
or her boss's pressure to complete a task, when that pressure
is reasonable and legitimate.
Prioritization Tools
While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations,
there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other prioritization
and time
management tools if you're going to be truly
effective. We look at some of these below:
While these simple approaches to prioritization
suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll
need other tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at
some of these below:
-
Paired Comparison Analysis:
Paired Comparison Analysis is most useful where decision criteria
are vague, subjective or inconsistent. It helps you prioritize
options by asking you to compare each item on a list with
all other items on the list individually. By deciding in each
case which of the two is most important, you can consolidate
results to get a prioritized list. Click here
to find out more about Paired
Comparison Analysis.
- Grid Analysis:
Grid Analysis helps you prioritize a list of tasks where you
need to take many different factors into consideration. Click
here
to learn how to use it.
- The Action Priority Matrix:
This quick and simple diagramming technique asks you to plot
the value of the task against the effort it will consume.
By doing this you can quickly spot the "quick wins" which will
give you the greatest rewards in the shortest possible time,
and avoid the "hard slogs" which soak up time for little eventual
reward. This is an ingenious approach for making highly efficient
prioritization decisions. Click here
to find out more.
- The Urgent/Important Matrix:
Similar to the Action Priority Matrix, this technique asks you to think about whether tasks are urgent or important.
Frequently, seemingly urgent tasks actually aren't that important. And often, really important activities (like working towards your life goals) just aren't that urgent. This approach helps you cut through this. Click here
to find out more.
- The Ansoff & Boston Matrices:
These give you quick "rules of thumb" for prioritizing the opportunities
open to you.
The Ansoff Matrix helps you evaluate and prioritize opportunities
by risk. The Boston Matrix does a similar job, helping you prioritize
opportunities based on the attractiveness of a market and your
ability to take advantage of it.
For more information on the Ansoff
Matrix, click here:
And for the Boston
Matrix, see here.
- Pareto Analysis:
Where you're facing a flurry of problems needing to be solved,
Pareto Analysis helps you identify the most important changes
to make.
It firstly asks you to group together the different types of
problem you face, and then asks you to count the number of cases
of each type of problem. By prioritizing the most common type
of problem, you can focus your efforts on resolving it. This
clears time to focus on the next set of problems, and so on.
For more information on Pareto
Analysis, click here.
- Nominal Group Technique:
Nominal Group Technique is a useful technique for prioritizing
issues and projects within a group, giving everyone fair input
into the prioritization process. This is particularly useful
where consensus is important, and where a robust group decision
needs to be made.
Using this tool, each group participant "nominates" his or her
priority issues, and then ranks them on a scale, of say 1 to
10. The score for each issue is then added up, with issues then
prioritized based on scores. The obvious fairness of this approach
makes it particularly useful where prioritization is based on
subjective criteria, and where people's "buy in" to
the prioritization decision is needed.
To learn more about the
Nominal Group Technique and how you and your
team can use it to prioritize issues and projects, click
here.
To understand how prioritization fits into
a comprehensive and effective time management system, click here
see our Make
Time for Success time management and personal effectiveness
self-study course.
And for our next time management tool,
looking at the Action Priority Matrix, click "Next article" below.
Spread the Word:
New Articles (Not included in the Mind Tools E-book.)
* Shows articles available in full only to Career Excellence Club Premium members
Locke's Goal Setting Theory - Understanding SMART Goal Setting
Golden Rules of Goal Setting - Five rules to set yourself up for success
Backward Goal-Setting - Using backward planning to set goals
New Year's Resolutions - Planning for a year of achievement
Action Priority Matrix - Making the most of your opportunities*
The Art of Filing - Managing your documents... and your time
The Urgent/Important Matrix - Using time effectively, not just efficiently*
Treasure Mapping - Visualizing your goal for greater achievement*
How Good is Your Time Management? - Discover tools that can help you*
Pickle Jar Theory - Make your schedule work. Leave time for fun!*
Managing Interruptions - Maintain focus. Keep control of your time.*
In Flow - Maximizing productivity through improved focus
Costing Your Time - Understand the real value of your time*
A full list of Mind Tools articles is available here.
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