If You Don't Have Time, You Don't Have Priorities

priorities time

With two little kids, a wonderful wife, a global business to run, and many ideas I’d love to realize, time for me is always too short. If I don’t prioritize my day in advance, I will quickly be swallowed by the urgent and lose control about the important. In the evening, I will feel frustrated because I worked a lot, served everybody, but feel depleted… To get out of the victim zone and regain my freedom, I use this simple prioritization method:

The Primary Task Method

If your to-do list overwhelms you, here’s a simple way to prioritize things:

Use the primary task method.

It saves my life once a day.

HOW IT WORKS

Ask your partners and main collaborators: „If there is just ONE thing that I should do today to move our business forward – what would that be?“

Then write it down somewhere visible (like over your desk) and apply as follows:

1) Write down all the things you should do (everything that has your attention).

2) Pick the top one and give it 90 minutes.
3) Pick the next top three and allocate them 60 minutes each.

4) Prepare the space for tomorrow (clean up your desk and screen from today’s work, put a timer on your desk or screen, put a note on it with your 90/60/60/60 on it.

WHY IT WORKS

That is your BIG THING for the day. Just one big thing. Once you figure out what it is – the start on it easier.

Always tackle your primary task first thing you start working. This will ensure that you’ll be productive.

Next, once you have finished your “one big thing”, go to the next three “medium” items on your to-do list. The 3 stands for things that are “good to have completed.”

After your primary task is finished (we are talking 100% here, not 90% or 95%), everything else will look easy. If your primary task was designing a new budgeting process, now getting you email inbox to zero looks much less scary.

Just remember, you can’t start working on your “3 mediums” unless you’ve finished your primary task.

Now try it, and let us now how it went!

As always, for more real-world techniques that work to regain your freedom, check our newest tools and forum.

Keep rolling,
Simon

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