Stop Prioritizing To Achieve Time Management Success
Prioritizing by level of importance is a major problem for many people trying to achieve success with time management.
Stop trying to prioritize by importance. That's a major piece of advice from someone obsessed with time management.
Prioritizing by importance has been a common sense time management technique taught for years. So telling you that it is a bad technique might raise some red flags. That's ok. I know I'm right. And you will discover your own solution by understanding this article.
Naturally, the 'time flies' phenomenon is great if you're in 'the zone' of productivity and life satisfaction. But how do you juggle all the deadlines, resources, and other people to find the balance?
And that's just at work!... But a Time Management System in today's fast economy must include both your work life as well as your personal life (leisure, hobbies, social relations, chores, etc).
Weekends are a great time to catch up o life's basic necessities. Because the week is so hectic. But imagine a handful of chores including cooking, filing in some documents, getting the pet to the vet, mowing the grass. The chores easily stack up. How can you really prioritize it all?
Have you tried prioritizing a list of things to do when you have dozens of things to do? It gets messy doesn't it? You try to arrange the order to decide on the most important thing. And you go and do that first. The thing is that areas of life get neglected because there isn't enough time to do everything when you prioritize by importance. Some things are always low on the list.
You would never get round to things like cutting the grass, exercising regularly, filing papers, reading your kids night time stories.
So can you combine importance with urgency? Say it's Saturday afternoon. Laura has a time with her piano tutor at 3.30pm. So that's an urgent priority. You plan to read your office work after taking her. But what about the haircut you wanted? At what point is the hair 'urgent' enough to be a priority? When it's long? How long? When the wife nags right?
Prioritizing by urgency, what would you do? Take your daughter. Get your hair cut. Read the office paper work. More and more of life gets neglected and messy.
That office memo is majorly important. But the tuition appointment is urgent because it starts in an hour. So the office memo has Priority Importance level A. But your daughters tuition has importance B but urgency A.
Now that your wife has made fun of your long hair it gets adjusted from priority C to priority A. The office memo can be done Sunday evening so that's actually priority B. But taking the wife shopping is a priority A as she's nagging that you didn't have time to go food shopping last week and she can't carry it all her self.
Along comes Saturday afternoon, and Sally's tutorship now gets crossed off the B list and put on the A list because it's Saturday, and you've got Memo and Sally's Tutorship on the A list.
That scenario does work, but it's not exactly smooth sailing is it? The ABCDE Method of prioritization is difficult to imagine working even with only 3 tasks... But what when you try to mix in the rest of your responsibilities and life? ...And there are changes in what's urgent all too often... so trying to prioritize like that soon gets you in a jam.
Modern time management needs something far better than the old fashioned method of prioritizing. Such a limiting time management technique creates big problems.
Searching for modern solutions to time management prioritizing is worth your time. Because your time is the most precious commodity you have. So abandon the traditional time management techniques and develop your own natural time management skill by striking out on new paths. Make your own choices. Discover what works for you.
Real time management solutions are available from Nathan T Shaw in his time management system.
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