You can have more playing and resting time, if you know the technique of task prioritization.
I hate to see works pending. I used to have my own to-do-list. I would normally categorize my tasks in my to-do-list into three priorities, which were high, normal and low. Unfortunately, most of the time I would be concentrating on the number of tasks in my list instead of their priorities, so sometimes it propelled me to complete the simpler but less important task first before completing the more crucial one. At the end of the day, I found myself couldn’t finish the more significant job. This bad habit is also known as procrastination! I procrastinated in settling the imperative jobs. Fortunately, I have learned a new way of creating a more effective to-do-list during a time-management workshop that I attended few months ago. Here is the chart that shows you how to create your own to-do-list more effectively without being interrupted by the less important jobs.
From what you can observe here, knowing how to recognize the important and urgent tasks is the main point you need to digest before you can proceed to finish the list. Sometimes we may be confounded by the definition of ‘important’ and ‘urgent’. How do you define something as ‘important’? Something which is considered as ‘important’ is more likely to create great impact to you or things related to you. For instance, if you don’t do certain tasks, your company is going to lose hundreds of thousands in sales. If you don’t do that, the patient’s sickness will exacerbate. What about the definition of ‘urgent’? Urgency normally refers to something which needs immediate action or attention at a particular period. For example, you need to meet a particular customer by today because tomorrow this customer will be leaving the country. After knowing the definition of ‘important’ and ‘urgent’, then you have to decide the importance and urgency of a particular task.
Back to the chart above, obviously you need to pay attention to zone A, because whatever highly important and urgent items will be listed here. So you need to complete the tasks occupying zone A first. Then you may be asking whether you shall go for important or urgent tasks during your next step, B or D? I will go for the more important one first, which is zone B. Nowadays, lots of people have abused the word ‘urgent’. A lot of people tend to use words like ‘super-urgent’, ‘extremely urgent’ to urge you to get things done earlier and faster for them. So the word ‘urgent’ basically does not carry much value. So it totally depends on you to recognize its urgency. I will advise you to settle the tasks that you think are more important first because those tasks may cause some negative impacts to you if you do it late. After Zone B, then you can steer to Zone D for the urgent one, and lastly only go to Zone C to finish the less important and less urgent jobs when you are free.
By using this chart, you will more likely to hold yourself accountable to deadlines and you can be easily convinced that the tasks located at Zone C can be done later during your leisure time and ensure yourself finishing the tasks in zone A,B & D in advance. Let us master the skill of task prioritization and stop procrastinating!
