How do you establish priorities for the day, so you don’t lose track of everything that needs to be done and complete all your work? This sounds complex, but the best news is that you can complete setting your priorities for the day in just ten minutes.
This post discusses the exact steps you need to take care of to set priorities for the day and achieve them without spending a lot of time or effort on this simple task.
Step one: Get in the mood.
This is the most important step for the process, and the best thing is that it takes a minute or less barely. Before setting yourself down to the task of setting priorities for the day, you need to bring your mind on board the task.
Breathe in, breathe out, and tell yourself that the next few minutes are going to be the most important minutes of the day. Tell your brain it needs to filter out all distractions and be present in the moment.
Step two: Write it out
The next step is to write out all the work you hope to achieve during the day. Don’t hesitate to add moments for self-care and relaxation as well. A journal can help you do exactly that. No wonder journaling has been established to be a great way to organize your day by spending the least amount of effort.
At this stage, don’t worry about writing the most important task first. Until now, the goal is to get everything off your head and onto the paper.
Step three: Prioritize
Once your priorities for the day are written down in front of you, you’ll get some clarity on what you need to achieve and how to do it. The next step is to prioritize your priorities. This means you need to order them in the sequence of how important they are to you.
You can characterize your tasks into these four categories as proposed first by the Eisenhower Matrix:
- Urgent and important: do it now.
- Important, but not urgent: decide when you will do it.
- Not important, but urgent: do it later.
- Urgent, not important: delegate to someone else.
Step four: Make a plan.
Once you’re written down your priorities and addressed the order in which you need to tackle them, the next step is to plan out your day according to the tasks at hand.
Make checkboxes on your planner and time block your entire day. Visualize completing each task and mentally calculate how long each task will take. Then, accordingly, fill your planner with details on how you will complete each task, how long it will take, how long a break you’ll allow yourself after they are complete, and what will be the time of the day when you’ll be done.
Some important points to keep in mind here are:
- Batch your tasks.
- Don’t add important but not urgent tasks earlier in your routine.
- Schedule breaks so you don’t run the risk of burning out.
- Any work that can be delegated to someone else — do it now.
Bonus: Have a partner
Having someone else do it with you can make building any new habit easier. If you can’t find a friend who’s also learning to set priorities for the day at the same time as you are, you can hire an accountability coach to help keep you on track. These are trained individuals who will hold you accountable and help you get back on track if you ever fall off the wagon.
You can also turn to technology and download a free habit tracker. This is a great way to mark your progress on the calendar and use it to motivate yourself to keep pushing on.