Do we consider ourselves a priority?
How often does your day feel overwhelming from the tasks that are placed onto your shoulders? Are you jumping from one task to another, talking in one conversation while still processing the previous one?
Does work/life balance for you look like a floundered ship, sinking among the waves of responsibilities, activities, and duty?
Well, good news! There's a tool that may help right that ship, re-calibrate your day, and get you moving towards accomplishing your goals and dreams!
Using a grid, we'll discuss how to prioritize your tasks, so that we gain a clearer perspective on what tasks to accomplish, how to accomplish, and when to accomplish them.
In a four quadrant grid, we give each quadrant a title:
| Urgent |
Not Urgent | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | Prioritize | Plan |
| Not Important | Proxy / Delegate |
Pass over |
Under the Urgent and Important cell would go the tasks that need to be done ASAP or soon. These tasks can't be put off or ignored. These should be the first things to prioritize in your day.
Next would be Important but Not Urgent. Under that one would be tasks that you can schedule for later in the day/week, after the Urgent, Important tasks have been completed.
Under Not Important yet Urgent would be tasks that are needed to be completed, but could be delegated to someone else to finish, so that your time and resources are spent on the more urgent matters.
Lastly, there is Not Urgent and Not Important. These tasks should be reviewed to gauge whether they still need to be on the "to-do" list, or can be let go of.
It should be noted, that when stress and responsibilities overwhelm, the first tasks to get cut, are ones that are beneficial to us, i.e. self care tasks. When we run into tasks head on, yet our tanks (energy, motivation, love) are empty, we are setting ourselves up for failure. So make sure when categorizing tasks using the above chart, that self care routines, activities, and rituals are being placed in the Urgent/Important quadrant. Otherwise, we are defeating the purpose of effective planning and time management.
