A high-achieving professional shares a task prioritization method that cuts stress. Write each task with two ratings: importance (high, medium, low) and urgency (high, medium, low). Do high-high tasks first, then mixed high-medium, then medium-medium. Re-rate unfinished tasks the next day.
Chapters
If you're a high achiever like me, prioritizing your tasks for the day is a must for stress management. I have a simple process I've been using for years that I'd like to share with you. What I do is I write down every priority that I have for the day on one line each, and then on the far right I put two columns. The first column is for importance, importance to my career, to my relationships, to my health, whatever is important to me. And I rate each one of those tasks either high, medium, or low. And then in the second column, what I do is I rate by urgency, or when that task needs to be done, rating that also high, medium, and low. For example, if I had a presentation that I needed to give that was important to my career and that presentation had to be given tomorrow, that would likely get both a high in importance and high in urgency. And so what happens is, once you've rated each of your tasks, you take a look at them, and any task that's— has a high rating in both columns gets first priority of your time, and then the pro— the tasks that have either high or medium, one each, get your second priority, and the tasks that have medium and medium get your third priority. Any other tasks that don't rate at least medium-medium are probably going to have to wait until another day. What this does is it gives you a chance to prioritize your most important tasks to make sure those are the ones that get done first. The other great thing is at the end of the day, I reprioritize whatever didn't get done and I re-rate it for the next day. This gives me a sense of completion and additional stress relief.
