Daily Priority List Building – Time Management

by John Wilkinsonhttp://bedbugsexterminationadvice.com/

A key to any successful time management schedule is creating a task list. Identifying the vital tasks that need to be achieved in the coming week for example. The next 5 working days may have 20 prioritised goals to meet target. This is the weeks agenda, but to accomplish every aspect it is a good idea to further break the list into an sub list based on a day by day basis usually placing emphasis on the most important first, and on which day they must by completed by. This 'small steps' approach breaks down the possible mental burden of remembering those little aspects of a huge project and helps eliminate those 'oh, I mustn't forget to do that' moments. It also reduces the stress as every step is laid out in manageable series of action points that have a feel good factor as increasingly they are ticked off the list. The small steps taken throughout the day culminate to become a far more sizeable step by the end of the day. The steps are as follows....

Generating the master list.

For that given day write down everything you need to get done. Don't concentrate on levels of importance just yet, just concentrate on getting everything on paper. Include everything you can think of associated with the task getting it out of your mind and into written form. It doesn't matter how many items you include as it is better to have them laid out before you so ignore the number even if you are going above say 50 items as this is just the transcribing part of the list building exercise. Remember to include as much as possible including the little things like checking your email.

Prioritising the items.

The trick to assigning high importance to items on the list is to think about the consequences of not getting those things done and how significant those consequences will be. This will focus your mind on levels of urgency... 'if I don't achieve this today what will be the ramifications.' Those items with the biggest consequences will now be placed into your A-list, a presentation to the board of directors will be included on the A-list, ordering that new sexy flat screen monitor because you really like the look of it won't.

Subsequent Levels.

Now review the non A-list index and sort out those tasks that will have a mild impact if not completed on that given day. These will become your B-list items. As you may have rightly guessed we now move onto the C-list, this will include anything that will not bite us back if not achieved today. Below this comes the D-list where D stands for delegate, those jobs that do not need your personal input but can be done by somebody else. If you are still left with items not allocated these should be of very little importance and can be either classified as extras if any time is left, ie E-list, or can have a line drawn through them.

Setting the order.

The list will now have A's, B's etc in a disjointed fashion, at least they are when I do it. I like to work from top to bottom and as such like my lists to run in the same order. So, we need to define a level of importance within our alphabetized mini-lists, if this is difficult take two at a time and play them off of each other to see which 'wins.' The most important item will be given the number 1 for example in our A-list the order would be A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4, etc. Now for clarity I would suggest transcribing these, in order, to a new sheet with obviously the highest first running from A to D (and E if you are including it.) You should now have a complete and purposeful list, if you feel there is too much to achieve in one day consider whether anything can be moved over to that D-list.

© 2010 John Wilkinsonhttp://bedbugsexterminationadvice.com/