exciting futures

PART 2  Set your priorities

Set your priorities

The "activity trap" is losing sight of why you are doing things.  It's easy to get caught in the activity trap if you don't keep sharp focus on the purpose of your activities.

Avoid this trap by becoming results-oriented.  By concentrating on results you can give priority to those tasks and activities that give the biggest return.

8    Be clear about what you want to achieve and what you want to avoid.  

Write these GOALS down.  

Get a piece of paper and a pen.  Copy the following down and complete them!

"For the foreseeable future, I want to achieve  . . . " 

"For the foreseeable future, I want to avoid . . . "

Completing these two statements usually covers your main goals in life.  If you've got more than three goals, you're probably not clearly focused on what you want.

Give your goals short-hand knick-names to make them easy to remember - especially if you've got more than three.

For example, you could have "My family time goal" or "My make lots of money goal".

9    Examine how you spend your time.  Look at what you are doing - your activities.  Do these activities help you achieve those things you want to achieve and avoid those things you want to avoid?

    Start asking yourself questions like the following:

        "Why am I doing this task?"

        "How does this activity help me achieve my goals?"

        "To what extent does this thing I'm doing help me achieve my goals?"

This is your first step in prioritizing.

IMPORTANT THINGS ARE YOUR TOP PRIORITY.  Once you're clear on your personal priorities, time management becomes much easier.  Start looking at what your priorities in life are.  

10    Rate the things you currently do in terms of their importance.  Important activities help you achieve what you want to achieve and avoid the things you want to avoid.

    An IMPORTANT task or activity helps you - doing it avoids a danger to you or brings a benefit to you.

    So ask yourself HOW IMPORTANT is each task you do?  This means, to what extent does the task help you achieve your goals!

In the next lesson, you'll learn more about prioritizing things into As, Bs, Cs and Ds based upon how urgent and important they are. For the moment, let's concentrate on understanding what important means to you.  

11    Spend minimum time on unimportant activities.  Unimportant activities don't help you but sometimes help other people.   How much time you spend on them might depend how important the other person is to you.  Spend minimum time on these unimportant activities.  Minimum time could be ZERO.  Be ruthless with time and gracious with people.

12    Recognize the difference between urgent and important.  They are NOT the same.

            URGENT things have do be done soon.

            IMPORTANT things bring you benefit. IMPORTANT things can also lead to hazard or danger if you don't attend to them. 

Importance has nothing do with "how soon".

So activities can be put into one of four boxes as below.

SOME EXAMPLES:

So, getting out a burning building is urgent and important (top right box). 

Chatting about nothing at the coffee machine is not important and not urgent (bottom left box).

Someone asks you for policy recommendations that will impact upon you and your team and this person needs them in a couple of months time - important but not urgent (top left box)

Interruptions- urgent but not important (bottom right box).

STOP HERE for a moment

• Don't progress until you are can recite the names of the four boxes.

• Take a few tasks you typically do in a day and see which boxes they fall into.  If most are in the top right, you might not be fully clear of what's important or you have to be a bit more ruthless with your importance ratings.

If you're not getting this - remember the following.

URGENT means that something is better done sooner.

IMPORTANT means it brings you benefit.

"But if something is urgent, it's important!".  If you're saying or thinking this, go back to tip one and do them all again.

If you don't treat importance in a different way to urgency, you'll do things you don't need to, you'll give prime time to low return activities and you'll work well below your capability.  

13    Adopt a strategy to time management that brings personal excellence. 

Expedite the urgent and unimportant - get them done but to a "good enough" standard. Excellence is not perfectionism.

Plan the important.  Break projects into manageable chunks.  Allocate quality time to these chunks.

Do the best you can with the important and urgent. Look into stress management.

Dump the low importance and low urgency.

SO, ONE MORE TIME, SETTING PRIORITIES MEANS:

• Be clear about what you want to achieve - in life and work.

• Don't confuse urgency and importance.

• Keep focused on the fact that important things help you achieve your goals.

• Use urgency and importance to be clear of your priorities - importance is your top priority, not urgency.

• Tasks fall into four categories depending upon how urgent or important they are - start labelling tasks accordingly.

LESSON ONE	LESSON TWO	LESSON THREE	LESSON FOUR	LESSON FIVE
ELIMINATE TIMEWASTERS	Go to the top of the page	PLAN and SCHEDULE	EXPEDITE THE URGENT	DEVELOP SELF- DISCIPLINE

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