Tweet

Urgent or Important? Learn to Prioritize

Guest post by: Alex Revai

Article Overview: We live in a highly accelerated, often crazy world. Everything is rush-rush. How do you prioritize your activities, when all the requests coming your way are "urgent" or ASAP? Learn the secret of differentiating between urgent and important and manage them accordingly.

Urgent or Important? Learn to Prioritize

"It's urgent!". "I want it now!". "Hurry, it's late!". "I want it yesterday!". Does it sound familiar?

These days, it seems, everything is urgent. Ding! You got email. You shouldn't, but you start reading it. You are in the second sentence, when the phone rings. Guess who is calling? Yes, the person, who just sent you the email. "Did you respond to my email yet?" - he asks. Crazy, but not far-fetched, is it?

First, let me make a bold statement: urgent, most of the time, does NOT equal important. By the way, urgent is not to be confused with an emergency. The latter is a different story altogether.

More often than not, something becomes urgent, because somebody (or you) neglected to do something in time, or didn't plan for making it happen.

Urgent tasks are deadline-related and often driven by others.

Important tasks are related to your goals and you want to do them.

So, how do you deal with all the "urgent" stuff, without losing your sanity?

Consider the following steps and best practices:

1. Write down your top (3 or 4) business and personal objectives.

2. Use the above as a gauge against which to evaluate all tasks (to-dos) and/or requests coming your way.

3. Anything, which supports your (business or personal) goals, is important.

4. Once you know what's important, it's time to prioritize.

a. Urgent and Important = Priority 1

b. Urgent but NOT important = Priority 2

c. Not urgent but Important = Priority 3

d. Not urgent and not important = Priority 4

5. Everything being equal, you may give higher priority to a task if its completion (or performance) impacts your personal or your business' reputation. I.e.: you made a specific commitment to deliver or perform.

6. Once you identified your priorities for a given day, you must write them in your calendar, reflecting the actual time required for their completion.

7. If it's not in your calendar (with all the intention to do it), there is a 75% chance it won't be done.

8. Of course, there are interruptions. But, they occur to the extent you allow them to occur. If you must allow them, then you must also leave extra time in your calendar for interruptions.

9. Real life situations don't necessarily fall into nice, "black & white" categories. Urgent tasks do pop up or come your way. However, if you prioritize systematically, plan your tasks pro-actively and with reality, you should be able to accommodate urgent tasks and interruptions.

10. Learn to say no.

Related Articles
  How to Prioritize
  Four Square Organizer
  The Urgency of Importance
  Seven Simple Ways To Prioritize
  Why do we put off the really important things?

Article Tags: goal setting, interruptions, prioritizing, priority, say no, Urgent and important tasks



Related Forum Posts
Re: What works for you? - Hi Yinka, I work better under pressure of deadlines when I am doing something for other people. However, I like to have the leisure to develop my own projects. The first case is what Stephen Covey calls a "Quadrant 1" activity ("Important and urgent") whereas the second case is a "Quadrant 2" activity ("Important, not urgent"). We should aim to make as much time as possible for Q2 activities so that we can develop our own projects. Easier said than done!
Re: Subject line Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":b50c4a20]Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?[/quote:b50c4a20] The only messages I get that say Urgent or Decision Required etc are spam. I tell people to put something relevant to their business with me in the subject line - this is especially important for the people who fall into my junk mail. Chris
Re: Management Processes? - Great question Aaron. Like you and Kevin have indicated, we can get a lot done by creating a management process. I like to: Prioritize what I need to do in order of importance. Pick the top priority item. Brainstorm possible tasks. Pick a task and complete it. Move on to the next task. I find this helps break things down into manageable pieces. It also helps just to take small actions. [Link removed by forum admin]
Import / Export Business - I am in the benign stages of starting an import/export business and would like to know the most important factors in the early stages of the business. 1)The most secure method conduct financial transactions 2)Important issues with development of a website?
Lisa Shepherd Story - Great story! I love the Earn - Learn - Equity - it's very relavent for new entrepreneurs.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why We MUST Reinvent The Wheel

Starting A Set of Books

Bootstrapping Your Start Up Business.

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.