How to determine priorities in scheduling your time?

Dear,

About me,

• Implement the daily plan\\s.
• Meet my team.
• Review the previous results from the last day.
• Check my e-mail inbox.
• Visit the other Depts. and review the procedures and actions

This is an excellent question, and one that is rarely asked.  Prioritisation is very important, and a lot of people are not very good at it, yet nobody seems to care.There are of course lots of ways you can do it.  Here is one basic system.

1) Create the list of tasks that have to be prioritised

2) Categorise each task according to three criteria

         a) Deadline  -  Urgent / Soon / When there is time

         b) Importance  -  Vital / Quite important / Not a big deal

         c) Effort  -  Trivial / Medium / Huge

using as many of the categories as you can.  (If there are tasks then use all nine categories.  If there are only seven tasks then you might only use five or six categories.)

Deadline - When will bad things happen if the task is not done? 

Important - How bad will the consequences be if the task is not done?

Effort - How much will it cost to do the task in terms of time, money, workload, number of people, stress, etc?

3) Score each task, with

      1 point each for Urgent, Vital or Trivial

      2 points each for Soon, Quite Important or Medium

      3 points each for the others.  

Add the scores for each task and subtract2 from each score.  Every task now has a score of between1 and7.

Example:  Task A is Urgent (1), Quite Important (2) and Medium (2).   Its initial score is therefore5: subtract2 for a final score of3.

4) Rewrite the task list grouping the tasks according to score.  That is, put all the score1s together, then the score2s and so on.

5) Examine the tasks which score1,2 or3 and find the single one of which you are most afraid.  Change its score to0.

6) Do the tasks in score order, starting with the score0 task and then the score1 tasks.   Any tasks which score7 (or even6) should not be done at all.

7) If there are a lot of tasks with the same score then you may have to re-run the whole process, this time using more categories.  Alternatively, re-run it just for the tasks with that score to create sub-scores.  Do all of the tasks in sub-score order before moving on to the next score.