Master Your Workload

"Prioritizing Your Workload" - Summary

• Assigning a priority to your activities saves time and helps focus on what is important.

• Organize work into piles or lists, with three to five priority levels.

• Priority 1 items are critically important and have a major impact on your job and success.

• Priority 2 items are routine responsibilities that are important but not urgent.

• Priority 3 items are low importance and urgency, to be completed when time permits.

• Priorities can and will change, and items may escalate or drop in priority.

• Items that should go directly to the trash are those that are daily spam, junk mail, and clutter.

• Handle routine paperwork only once to reduce lost time.

• Break down large tasks into bite-sized pieces to make steady progress towards timely completion.

• Identify the sequence and timeline of sub-tasks for large projects, prioritizing those that require more lead time.

• Keep a simple and easy history of communications with others that affect project completion.

• Build and maintain a to-do list that is simple, effective, accurate, complete, and current.Tips for Creating and Using an Effective To-Do List

• An effective to-do list should be complete and include all tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines.

• It should indicate both what needs to be done and when it should be finished.

• The simplest form of a to-do list can be a page or two of one-line entries on a pad of paper with the headings date assigned, task, deadline, and completion.

• To-do items that are long, involved, and complex should be broken down into smaller bits and recorded as separate items on the to-do list.

• The purpose of the to-do list is to be a simple, usable reminder tool that keeps you on track.

• Review your to-do list daily and revise it at least once per week.

• Consider setting aside a small amount of time at the end of each week to review and rewrite your to-do list.

• Follow four simple rules in working with your list: (1) put everything on it, (2) keep it with you, (3) review and revise it regularly, and (4) prioritize your tasks.

• With the barrage of physical and electronic information that you are inundated with daily, it is more important than ever to develop skills in sorting through, organizing, and saving important communications.

• The fundamentals of organizing and filing your records and paperwork are not complex or time-consuming, but people rarely spend the planning time to do this important task.

• For physical records, a filing system that is organized by subject with subfolders for more detailed records should work for any situation.

• Start small and start now when it comes to organizing your records and paperwork.