The blog

In times like these, it is more impor­tant than ever to work effi­cient­ly in the sense that we spend our time doing the right things. ??Now is the per­fect time to bet­ter refine and elu­ci­date our tasks and assign­ments so that we real­ly have time for the most impor­tant ones, mean­ing, those which con­tribute the most to meet­ing our objec­tives in the short term as well as attain­ing the company’s long term vision.

Do this

1. Take an emp­ty sheet of paper. 
2. In the top right hand cor­ner write down the goals that are the most impor­tant ones to work towards in the next six months. Write down what KPIs, key fig­ures or mile­stones it con­cerns. Also make note of what val­ues describe and define the goal. For exam­ple: ​“Turnover X USD”, ​“X% cov­er­age”, ​“X num­ber of new stores”, ​“the launch­ing of a new prod­uct on May 15^th”. 
3. Next, divide the sheet into three columns.
4. As the head­ing for the left col­umn, write ​“Doesn’t con­tribute to meet the objec­tives”. As head­ing for the mid­dle col­umn write ​“Prob­a­bly con­tribute to meet the objec­tives” and for the col­umn to the right, write ​“Def­i­nite­ly con­tribute to meet the objectives”. 
5. Now take your time to think through what your assign­ments and tasks in your work are, and describe them just as detailed as if they were to-dos on your to-do list. Write down the dif­fer­ent tasks in the appro­pri­ate col­umn. It’s only you who know which col­umn is the right one for each and every task, based on your expe­ri­ence of your own work. 
   • Which of your dai­ly duties and tasks unques­tion­ably con­tribute to achiev­ing the goals you have writ­ten down on the top right cor­ner of the page? 
   • What tasks prob­a­bly con­tributes, or at least con­tribute at the next lev­el to achiev­ing the goals? 
   • And final­ly, what tasks don’t real­ly con­tribute to attain­ing the goal you’re aim­ing at, but are only things you do by habit or with­out ask­ing your­self why?

6. The next six months,

   • Allow the tasks you’ve writ­ten in the right col­umn have the high­est pri­or­i­ty, mean­ing, do these tasks first. 
   • Do the tasks in the mid­dle col­umn as well, but with an aver­age lev­el of pri­or­i­ty. Con­sid­er whether you could del­e­gate some­thing, so you’d get more time to do the tasks with the high­est priority. 
   • The tasks you’ve got in the left col­umn, those that don’t con­tribute to the achieve­ment of your goals; decide whether you should stop doing them at all, if you can out­source them to some­one out­side of the com­pa­ny or whether to del­e­gate them to a col­league, for whom these tasks could be con­tribut­ing to achiev­ing his or her goals.
7. Leave this sheet on your desk for the next month. As soon as you get into a sit­u­a­tion where you’re won­der­ing what to pri­or­i­tize, check in what col­umn you pre­vi­ous­ly put the task. If it’s not on the paper, decide in which col­umn the task belongs. 

Pri­or­i­ty aid

This way of pre­sent­ing your pri­or­i­ties is an excel­lent pri­or­i­ty-tool in your every­day life. ??If your pri­or­i­ties are out of your hands, if you have a boss you need to check in with before deter­min­ing what to do, it’s also excel­lent mate­r­i­al for when you argue for what tasks you think you should pri­or­i­tize. It’s most like­ly impor­tant to your boss that the com­pa­ny achieves its goals and if you’re able to show what tasks con­tribute the most in doing this, I am con­vinced that you will soon have a com­mon pic­ture of what is the right pri­or­i­ty for you.

How do you do it?

How do you make sure you do the right things in hard times like these?

Please leave a com­ment below.