Tools for Effective Prioritizing
Making time for the important things is what promotes happiness. Balance is the key to maintaining this and keeping this afloat. This post is about effective strategies in managing your priorities and understanding the different parts of your life and how to focus on each one to create progress and keep the balance.
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is an effective tool when understanding what is a priority and how to manage your time more effectively.
I’ve attached a link to this tool so that you can use it: Eisenhower Matrix
Each quadrant represents a different spectrum of tasks that needs to be completed. The upper left quadrant is tasks that are “urgent and important”. These tasks have upcoming deadlines and not meeting these deadlines will have repercussions. The upper right quadrant is tasks that are “not urgent but still important”. These tasks may not have a deadline per se but completing these is highly important to you. The bottom left quadrant is an urgent task that is not necessarily important at all. These tasks may require immediate attention but aren’t reflective of value for yourself. These are normally distractions and appear to be something that needs to be addressed right now. Lastly, the bottom right quadrant is not urgent and not important. This is the self-sabotaging square. These tasks are usually gratifying and allows us to continue the procrastination cycle with all the other tasks. These tasks should be addressed once all other tasks in the remaining quadrant are completed.
I suggest that you use this for daily and/or weekly tasks to keep yourself focused and less overwhelmed. Doing this with your “master to-do list” will be a huge Eisenhower Matrix and will not motivate you to work on these things.
2. Life Balance Wheel
The Life Balance Wheel breaks your life into different parts or aspects that are values to you. What is nice about this tool is you can customize it to reflect your different values.
I’ve attached a link to this tool so that you can use it: Life Balance Wheel
This wheel is broken down into sections but it looks like a pie. In each section, you are to rate how you feel you are doing with each part on a scale of 0-10. The 0 is in the middle of the circle and the 10 is at the top of the section. You would fill in the section based on the number that represents where you are. After completing this entirely, you will have a gauge of where you are currently at in your life and all the different parts.
The goal is to take 2-3 sections of your pie and break those down into intentions/goals of what you want to work on for the month. Since these are big values it will need more than just a day or week to accomplish growth. This helps set the intention for the entire month and ultimately the intention for the weeks and days of that month. I find that it keeps you present and focused on “what can I do about it today or right now?”
3. Time Blocking
Time blocking is the act of looking at an hour or every 30-minute schedule and actively blocking out time to work on tasks/projects.
The purpose of this is to set an intention for the time you have throughout the day. We may fill this time with something unproductive, leaving us wondering where did all my time go? This also sets the reality of what you actually can accomplish today. If you can plan it out based on how much time you have and need you can realistically look at whether or not this can or cannot be accomplished.
It may be appropriate to try these different strategies during the month and reflect after the month is over to see how you did and what tool was more effective than others.
Let's continue to work towards balance together!
