5 Practical Methods to Prioritize Work for Streamlining a Projects

Prioritizing work is one of the oldest struggles employees suffer from even today at the office. With multiple tasks to perform, sudden tasks turning up, people coming back and forth at the work desk, emails and messages constantly popping up, it can be difficult to keep up with the task priority. It can be overwhelming to set activities as per their priority, and only team collaboration software makes it easier.

Mastering prioritization helps to win half the battle by bringing down stress levels while uplifting work-life balance, time management skills, and productivity. Once priorities are set in place, urgent tasks requiring immediate attention can be seen right away, followed by ones to be completed later. The parameters of setting up work priorities are simple, but it can be difficult to set them sequentially right, and we will show you how to go about it systematically. Without prioritize your work projects can be difficult to manage. Here are top 5 methods to prioritize work for streamlining projects effectively.

1. Prepare a master list

It can be tough to start off prioritizing things from the beginning before even knowing what is to be done. Instead, note down every single task coming to your mind, irrespective of what the order should be. Think of this activity as a dumping ground from wherein a lot of things are collected before segregating them as to whether useful or not.

As soon as a master list is in place, the tasks requiring attention can be distinguished easily. Also, the tasks can be sorted as per their timelines, such as a daily task, weekly task, or monthly task. This makes it easier, to begin with, daily tasks, followed by weekly tasks, and then monthly tasks, keeping in mind the importance and urgency in parallel.

2. Use the Eisenhower Matrix

Eisenhower Matrix helps in dividing tasks into four categories – urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important. The urgent important tasks should be on top of the priority list, while non-urgent unimportant tasks should be at the bottom of the priority list. The tasks that are important but without urgency should be scheduled and taken by the team leader while the ones that are urgent but not important can be delegated to the team.

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Team members should be flexible enough in modifying the matrix as per the project needs. The Pareto principle should apply to each team member. It focuses on 20% relevant efforts bringing in 80% real results. Delegate the tasks accordingly in a team collaboration software, so that people do smart work and take up key tasks first, holding most relevance for the project.

3. Implement Ivy Lee Method

Despite best efforts, one can end up with too many important and urgent tasks. It makes it evident to dig deeper into the tasks. Ivy Lee method revolves around a set of rules to follow such as:

– Write down the six most important tasks at the end of the day to do the next day

– Take up the first one, work until it completes, and only then move to the next. Repeat the process by writing down six tasks every day with uncompleted ones carried forward from the previous list.

– Doing this activity with the help of team collaboration software always comforts individuals with achieving only six tasks in the entire day, keeping everyone focused and free from stress.

4. Adapt to 2-list strategy

Working towards wrong goals ruins the entire day, no matter how effective and efficient people are on the team. The best way to reassess the entire situation is to periodically go through long term goals for analyzing. The project is going on the right path or not. This is where Warren Buffet’s 2-list strategy is a great way to see whether the goals are worth taking up first hand or not.

As per this strategy, jot down topmost 25 goals related to education, career, life, profession, and so on, while taking enough time to note down inside the team collaboration software. Now circle the top 5 goals among these, complete them, and repeat the process every day. Certain goals look important in the short term, but in the long term, they serve no major purpose.

5. Adapt sunk cost fallacy

When going through the prioritization exercises, it is important to be flexible at all times. It is hard to predict what is in store in the future. Prioritization with planning is simply a guess since it might be needed to change based on changing deliverables and expectations.

You can’t be sure about the judgements at each point since the project and client needs might change frequently. This can also mean change in the task importance and relevance constantly. Ultimately, this results in a sunk cost fallacy condition, which can be unfavorable for any project.

Sunk cost fallacy is the psychological state of individuals, who invested a lot of time and effort in a particular task that at one point was important, but now does not hold any significance. Since there already has been a lot put on line already by individuals, despite the tasks being unimportant now people are unable to back down due to so much time and energy being invested in the same. However, people need to change with changes in priorities, instead of sticking to the same unwanted tasks in the team collaboration software.

Concluding Thoughts

Priorities are always great but are realistic within the team collaboration software. With prioritization done systematically and flexibility involved in changing priorities, projects can move around smoothly. Towards the end of the day, it is all about concluding with daily tasks, followed by weekly objectives, and monthly goals.

Tasks can take longer than protected and uncertainties are at every phase of the project. However, prioritizing them can avoid tasks taking longer, even with meetings and interruptions around. The most valuable tasks should be the first ones to be completed, followed by valuable, less valuable, going way up to least valuable ones down the queue.