“I am stressed at my workplace “or “Workload is huge, I am done with my work “etc. These statements might be much familiar for most of the working professionals across the globe.
Have you ever wondered why this happens in the life of every individual working in any sector, whether it be corporate or commercial?
Most of us strive hard to be perfect in our workplace by adhering to deadlines and becoming more productive each day.
But at times, when multiple projects overload our work, we gradually keep aside what we set out to complete at first and get into the new one and end up asking, “how to prioritize the tasks?”. But do you think this approach might help you to become productive at your workplace? Not really!
The majority of working professionals don’t have a well-defined process for prioritizing tasks and time management and always feel like they are stressed and saturated with too many tasks.
Therefore, to get more attention at work, to accomplish your tasks within the stipulated and to work without pressure, the very first thing you must do is to prioritize your tasks.
By spending granules of your quality time in setting your daily priorities, you can ultimately boost your productivity and also manage your time at work. Thus, you can maintain your professional as well as personal life on a thread.
Have a look at the tips that will help you prioritize your tasks at the workplace:
Create your to-do list
Creating a to-list means that you must initially gather all your tasks that have to be done first. In a rush to deep-dive into working on projects, most of the professionals skip this elementary step to list out the priorities to work across multiple projects.
In short,
List out your tasks to be done, and prioritize them according to their relevance.you can break your bigger task into many subtasks to save yourself from pressure.
Next, you can add additional information like the time it will take, its importance, etc across each task.
Therefore, by organizing your tasks through creating a proper to-list, you can get an idea about your work structure on a single day, and on which area you must pay more attention initially, etc.
Implement a prioritization method that would help you organize your tasks
There are mainly a few methods for prioritizing your tasks:
Eisenhower Decision Matrix:
Eisenhower's decision matrix is another important system that aids to prioritize your tasks at work. In this method, your tasks are categorized into four quadrants based on their importance and urgency.
Category 1: Important and Urgent – Tasks that have to be done first and those with high-priorities that should be accomplished within a stipulated time.
Category 2- Important but not Urgent - Those tasks which are important but not so urgent to be done on that particular day falls under this category. These types of work can be scheduled after doing the priority one.
Category 3: Not Important but Urgent – Tasks that come under these categories are urgent but not important. Therefore, you can delegate or re-schedule those tasks to some other person in your team.
Category 4: Not Important and Not Urgent – Tasks you can neglect since they aren't worthless and don’t benefit you even if done successfully. Such works are time wasters and you must avoid consuming your quality time in accomplishing them.
ABCDE Method
The most important process of organizing your tasks at work is the ABCDE method. This system of prioritization enables you to consider the most relevant task as the primary work to be done.
Therefore, take the to-do-list you have created, analyze the relevance of each task in your list and accordingly assign a letter value to each of your tasks. This is done in a similar manner for providing grades to your work and also if demanded, you can re-prioritize your tasks.
Red or ‘A’ Tasks – These are the main tasks to be done first, and may cause major negative consequences if you fail to complete these tasks within the stipulated time.
Yellow or ‘B’ tasks –Tasks in this category are given secondary importance and may cause slight issues if not completed.
White or ‘C’ tasks – Tasks that will leave you content such as taking breaks and going for a walk but only comes after completing ‘A’ and ‘B’ tasks.
Blue or ‘D’ tasks – In this category, tasks may not contribute any bigger value to your productivity, so you may delegate it or re-assign it to your teammate.
Green or ‘E’ tasks – Time consuming and worthless tasks fall under this category. You have the privilege to eliminate those tasks whenever it is possible.
After assigning letters or colour codes accordingly, you must ensure that ‘ A ‘ and ‘B’ items are meant to be achieved first than others as far as there is no re-prioritization required.
Also, if the task contains multiple sub-tasks within it, you may consider splitting them again related to their priority and assign them as A1, A2, A3, etc. But in case there is an opportunity where you can get A2 done first before A1, then go for it.
Therefore, by assigning colour codes or letters to your tasks, you can organize your tasks at your workplace by prioritizing tasks and time management which helps you to maintain a proper personal and work-life balance.
In short, prioritizing your work in a well-structured manner will enable you to augment your productivity by saving the valuable time that would eventually aid you to complete your tasks within the stipulated time and thus meeting the desired deadline.
Next time, you question yourself “how to prioritize the tasks?” you know what to do!
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