You start your day with the best of intentions. You wake up knowing that you want to accomplish a lot of things, but at the end of the day, you find yourself sitting there, feeling like you’ve accomplished nothing and wondering where the day went. Does this sound familiar? If so, it’s time to prioritize!
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Start out by making a to-do list. Write down all of the things you want to accomplish. Now, realistically look at the list. Many people over-schedule themselves and that is why many of us feel like we’re never accomplishing anything with our time.
We are getting stuff done. But when we write down 15 things on our to-do lists but really only have time for 5, we just look at the 10 things that we didn’t get done and feel like failures.
Start prioritizing your tasks into “A”, “B,” and “C,” priorities and only schedule yourself for what’s important – and what you can get done.
The next step is to categorize these things. What are the things that absolutely must get done today? These are the things that have to get done to avoid a bad consequence. For example, do you have orders to ship out? If you don’t do it, the buyers will start complaining. Another example is if “grocery shopping” is on your to-do list, and there’s no food in the house, you need to do it to avoid starving. Mark these tasks an “A” priority.
Next, what are the things that you need to do, but aren’t as necessary? For example, you need to write some blog posts. Yes, you need to do it, but nothing terrible will happen if it gets done tomorrow and not today. These are “B” priorities.
The tasks that you’d like to do, but aren’t important, are “C” priorities. These are things like pedicures or lunch with your friends.
Now, look at your list and focus on the A activities. Get those done and then, if you have time for the rest of the things, great. If not, do those things tomorrow.
At the end of the day, you’ll know you got the most important tasks taken care of.
By Crissy Herron, www.IndieBizChicks.com
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I started to do this and belive me it helps in my day job, home, family, and my small craft business.
I put on the A list things I need to get done at work, home, with family and the craft business. It really stress free the day and I can get more done. Carolyn
I like your idea of dividing the list into work, home and so on. I think I will try that along with what I am already doing. Thanks and God Bless
I found this to be very helpful. Each day I move the items up on my list. B becomes A C moves to B. I also add at least one more to each list. This way I know what is expected both today and tomorrow so I can plan accordingly. A wonderful, very useful article. Thank You and God Bless.