Prioritization & Productivity

Why !

I wan’t to build a weighted system for prioritizing task and activities.

Overview

We’ll talk about prioritizing your tasks so you are working on the most important, highest return tasks first and moving away from working on things you really shouldn’t work on.

Time Management Fundamentals

Introduction

If we just manage our time, but haven’t prioritized what we need to do, we could find ourselves being very efficient working on the wrong things. If we have prioritized our tasks, but aren’t good at managing our time, we will know what we have to do, but be frustrated because we just aren’t getting to it

Productivity in Perspective

Having peace doesn’t mean everything is slow and you aren’t moving. For me, peace is a result of productivity. Peace comes from movement and progress

Productivity isn’t just being active, productivity really means results. When you are productive, you feel a sense of pride in your work, which leads to satisfaction with your work.

At the Heart of Time Management

First, we need to identify the things that are actually robbing us of our time. Sometimes I know I should work on a certain project, but I get lost in my email or I get lost on social media or reading the news. If I were to make a list of the top 5 things I need to do every day, checking what my friends are up to on social media would not be on the list.

Another issue at the heart of time management is the size or scope of our projects. I find when I take a large project and break it into smaller pieces, it’s a lot easier for me to make real progress. I tend to stay on schedule instead of being overwhelmed by the scope of a huge, massive project that seems too big to finish.

I’ve found one of the biggest thieves of time management is having to do rework because a project wasn’t done right the first time. Mistakes, large or small, can cause us to pause what we’re doing and open up old projects. You know how hard it is to stop working on one thing, jump into something else, and then go back. This is one of the biggest time wasters and could be avoided if we just do things right the first time. It takes time for us to go back into the old project, try and remember what it was all about, decipher code and specs, and figure out how we need to fix what we didn’t do right in the first place. Doing things right the first time might be the best time management tactic you employ.

  • Only 5 things to do for a given day
  • Avoid Rework

Redefining Work and Productivity

When you’re a manager, you’ll help other people do their job, but managing people and being in meetings while not getting any tickets done is definitely a paradigm shift. It can feel very unproductive. I came to realize my best contribution towards productivity was to help others become more productive. When I switched from ticket finisher to helping others finish tickets, I became more valuable in my role.

Manage Expectations :

Poorly defined specs make for an uncomfortable conversation. The results could cause your customer to lose confidence in you. When you don’t manage expectations, you might take the blame for a perceived failure and assume costs. You might have to work harder to get something delivered by the deadline. These are mistakes you might make in the beginning of your career, but you should learn from them quickly. When I define project specifications, I like to understand what the MVP, or minimum viable product, is. I want to know what a successful product delivery would be and have that definition communicated properly to me and my customer. Too often, I have assumed what project priorities were. Instead of assuming, I would have been better to have the right conversations and ask the right questions.

  • Lab Activities and Client Work

Saying No

Warren Buffett said, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

Time management guru Tim Ferriss, author of The 4‑Hour Workweek, says, “What you don’t do determines what you can do.”

There are plenty of reasons we find it so hard to say no, but let me tell you, saying no can also be extremely empowering.

“Instead of making a to‑do list, you should make a won’t‑do list.” Have you ever thought of listing the things you won’t do? Items might end up on this list because you don’t have time to do them or you’re not interested in doing them, or they simply don’t align with what you really need to work on. The idea of a won’t‑do list empowers you to work on the things that need your attention. saying no is critical to time management.

  • Won’t do list (Notion)

Becoming a Finisher

Unfinished projects can really clutter our minds. They take up space and they nag at us. This impacts our ability to focus on the things we really need to work on.

Sometimes, unfinished projects are simply hard to resume. It’s hard to jump into something from 6 or 12 months ago and pick up where you left off. You have to remember where you were, why you did things a certain way. Figure out if the original specs are still applicable, etc.

Finishing something right the first time is usually faster and more efficient than delaying until later, which usually increases the amount of time needed to finish. So what do we do about unfinished projects? Well, the most obvious answer is to finish the project. I know this is sometimes easier said than done. Maybe we need to change the scope of the project and then finish the new scope. Sometimes it’ll make sense to, as Seth Godin says, pivot. Perhaps we need to evaluate the project and then just pull the plug. In this case, you would say, I’m not going to finish it, and then write it off and don’t worry about it unless the outcome becomes relevant again. You would do this to get closure on those projects, allowing you to concentrate on the things you need to concentrate on now. This also helps you protect your reputation. You don’t want people to think, well, I can’t give that project to her because she never finishes her projects. Finally, you gain confidence as you finish and deliver your work. I’d say these are some pretty good reasons to become a finisher

Multitasking: Friend or Foe?

Multitasking makes you 40% less efficient, not to mention multitasking has an impact on our memory. Multitasking impacts our stress level and a host of other things, including our IQ, our EQ, our creativity, our learning, and more.

I do it right and I don’t have to rework it once I’m done. I can get more high‑quality work done faster than people who say they can multitask.

Effective Calendaring

One of the most important things I put on my calendar is a block of time to work on certain projects. If I block out time on my calendar, I’m much more likely to actually spend the right time on it. If I need quiet time or I need to work on something that takes a lot of concentration, I put it on my calendar with the appropriate amount of time. I find this much more effective than just saying I need to work on something sometime.

Managing Distracting Tools

Similarly, many people have found they’re more productive when they turn off their email client and only check it two or three times a day. This is a weird habitual shift, especially if you are used to monitoring your email all day long, but I invite you to give it a try.

Check your email at, say, 10 and 2 and 4 and see if you are able to concentrate better on the projects you’re working on.

If text messaging is a major distraction, either silence your phone or hide it so you’re not tempted to check your messages all the time. Just as you turned your email client off, you can turn your chat off.

The easiest way to do this is to find the status setting and set yourself to do not disturb or busy. I do this when I get on webinars, and it’s really nice to not have a chat pop up while I’m in a meeting. Schedule certain times to check your collaboration tools. These really are great communication tools, but just like email, if you are watching for messages all day, you might find you’re slower to work on your projects.

Going back to the concept of multitasking, just schedule when you will watch these tools and then honor your schedule. Basically, if you’re working on something you need to concentrate on, schedule time where you turn off distractions so you can be more effective.

Benefiting from Prioritizing

Aligning Priorities

Peace comes from making sure you’re working on things you need to work on instead of things that are just busy work or just filling time.

The priorities others have can have a real impact on how you prioritize things (working with others).

How do the priorities of your organization impact your priorities (job).

How aligned are the things you are prioritizing with organizational objectives? It’s important to consider your boss’s priorities. Her priorities should be aligned with the company priorities, but might be more hyper focused on her boss’s priorities.

Personal priorities aligned with your team’s priorities.

While organizational priorities are always important to support, it’s worth noting that helping someone make progress with their personal priorities can pay off with stronger professional relationships that could help you later in your career.

Covey’s Four Quadrants

Quadrant 3 is urgent, but not important. For example, that meeting you got pulled into where you wondered why you were there. I can’t help but remember the times the CEO of a company I worked at would walk pass my office on his way to the conference room and say, Jason, I need you in this meeting. I knew I didn’t need to be in those meetings. I wasn’t sure why he had me there. Maybe it was for moral support. All I knew was I had things that were urgent and important that I needed to work on, and I didn’t need to be in those meetings. These interruptions seemed inevitable, whether it’s a phone call, email, text or somebody pulling us into a meeting, whatever it is, there are going to be plenty of opportunities where we have something that appears to be super urgent, but really isn’t important. How much time do you think you should spend in quadrant 3? The question really is, how can we avoid getting sucked in to quadrant 3? That sense of urgency is going to pull at us, but we’ve got to figure out how to resist the pull.

Step 1: Create the List

Revisiting Covey’s Four Quadrants

Quadrant 1 is where we’re working on Urgent, Important tasks. It’s always good to work on important things, but we don’t want working in quadrant 1 to be our normal. When we’re always working on urgent things, we can feel out of control. When I’m in quadrant 1, I get stuff done and I’m productive, but the stress level is not something I want to sustain. I’m guessing you spend more time here than you want. Quadrant 2 is the goal. This is where we should try to spend most of our time. Quadrant 2 tasks are Important, but Not urgent. Quadrant 3 is Urgent, but Not important. It’s weird to think we might spend any time here, but when things are urgent, they all of a sudden seem important, even if they’re not. For example, leveling up on a video game might feel urgent, but for most of us, it’s not important. Quadrant 4, where things are neither urgent, nor important, is generally where we waste time. We should try to avoid this quadrant completely. Here are two important questions

First, in which quadrant do you spend most of your time? Are you spending more time than you should in quadrant 1, 3 or 4? If you are, what can you do to move out of those quadrants? Second, where should you spend your time? I am not saying you should only ever be in quadrant 2, you’re going to have to spend your time in 1 and 3 sometimes. Urgent is urgent, spending time in urgent will sometimes be out of your control. But at the heart of the question is this. What can you do to spend your time in the quadrants where you need to be instead of where you have been? This might be your most important takeaway from this course.

I want to make an important point about quadrant 4. There’s a big difference between leisure time activities and activities that steal your time. Let’s say leisure time is where you need to take a break. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break. Sometimes we need to take a mental, physical or social break. We can recharge and refresh so we come back to our projects with more energy and better focus. Contrast that healthy break with something that doesn’t give us a break or recharge or refresh us. I would argue the activities that help us work better are important, which puts them in quadrant 1 or quadrant 2, whereas activities that don’t help us are not important, putting them in quadrant 4.

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t feel guilty for taking care of yourself, even if you didn’t have that on your task list. We haven’t really talked about quadrant 3 yet. This is a weird quadrant. Why would you work on something that is not important, but urgent? I think the quadrant 3 tasks I have the most are interruptions. This could be someone walking into my office and chatting or getting engaged in an online chat or email conversation. These become urgent, but could easily be classified as not important. I saw a suggestion online that said, if it’s urgent, but not important, figure out a way to delegate the task to someone. You could also negotiate with others involved, the people who make the task urgent to see if their urgent task is more urgent or important than other things you need to do. Or, if someone comes into your office, you could kindly and assertively let them know that you want to talk to them, but you can’t right now, and could they put something on your calendar?

When Everything Is a Top Priority

Have you ever created a to‑do list where everything was a top priority? If so, you aren’t the only one to have that problem. My guess is, everything on your list was urgent. Doesn’t just knowing about the four quadrants give you a new perspective on priorities? If you find everything on your list is a top priority, I have an idea for you. First, focus on quadrant 1 tasks, that is Urgent and Important.

You want to work your way out of quadrant 1 by finishing or reevaluating those items. Eliminate urgent items that are not important, quadrant 3 tasks, by either reevaluating or delegating them. This should reduce a considerable amount of stress.

There’s a great anecdote I read about Warren Buffett having a conversation with his pilot. Warren asked his pilot about his career goals. He asked him to list 25 things important to those goals. He then asked his pilot to circle the five most important things from that list. Obviously, these were the top priority. When Warren asked about the other 20 things, the pilot said something like, well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They’re still important, so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit, at which point Warren Buffett said, “No, you got it wrong. Don’t work on those 20 things at all until you have the 5 you circled completely done.” The lesson I learned is that the 20 uncircled items are not important until I finish the top 5 things. If you can list 25 things you think are high priorities, circle the 5 highest items. This will show you what your real important priorities are. Focus on those before you work on the others. By this point, you have enough information to create your system. Make sure you honor it. You will have spent a lot of time brainstorming your tasks. You will have spent a lot of time identifying factors to help you prioritize your tasks. Working through those tasks will take time and effort. Trust your system, honor the system, and you should see satisfying progress as you work through your tasks in the right order.

Becoming More Productive: Prioritizing and Managing Time

Review of Tactics

Turning off your email and only checking it at certain times of the day. Same with social media and even chat and collaboration tools

Creating the system and then honoring the system.

But I’m sure having a clean and organized environment kept distractions down and helped him produce more.

I could tell he was focused on getting rid of every single thing that didn’t have an impact on him or his current projects.

Understanding Productivity

But, really, busy is not necessarily the same thing as productive. Busy should not be our goal. Our goal should be to produce the right things.

Think about what your value to the organization is. If what you do is aligned with organizational goals, you will probably be known as someone who is highly productive.

If your goals and objectives are not aligned with the goals and objectives of your customer, which again could be an internal or external customer, you could be working on the wrong things.

If you are overwhelmed by the magnitude or scope of their goals and end results, simply break the project into bite‑size chunks that you can manage. Another way to approach being overwhelmed is to work backwards from the end result. You might not know exactly how to work forward from where you are at, but if you can define the end goal and then say, okay, what’s the thing that needs to happen before we can accomplish the end goal and continue that process working backwards to where you are, you will be able to create a path moving forward.

Functional, Digital Transformation & Domain Knowledge.

Do the Right Work at the Right Time

For example, there are probably times during the day when you’re most productive with projects like coding or studying or writing, or whatever. Then, there are other times that are better for meetings or getting away from your desk. Think about when you have the most energy during your work day and when you are the most sluggish.

Just understanding when I’m optimized to do certain types of work and block out those times on my calendar has really helped me increase my productivity. When you create those blocks, try to honor them.

Body and Brain Hacks

What can we do when we feel like we’re just not performing, when we don’t feel motivated or productive? I

When you feel like you’re in a mental or a physical slump, a time when you aren’t effective and all you want to do is play a game or read an article or surf the web mindlessly, are there things you can do to impact your productivity?

Absolutely. Here are some ideas The first idea has to do with your diet. I know a lot of people use soda, coffee or energy drinks to help them feel awake and have more energy. I’m personally not a fan of using sugar for energy. Have you ever had to present in a meeting after lunch? I remember once I was on around 2 or 3 in the afternoon when the sugar crash was in full effect. There are healthier ways to impact your energy during your workday. The first step is to honestly evaluate your diet, specifically for energy management, and make changes to your meals and snacks. There are plenty of articles you can dive into about when and what you eat impacting mental and physical performance.

Another idea is something like mindful meditation or yoga, or something similar. I’ve learned to love going on walks in the middle of the day. I didn’t think it was doing much for me physically, like running or cycling would, but when I come back from a walk, I feel more energized and awake. My mind is clear and I’m ready to focus on whatever I was working on. Whether I’m picking up on something I took a break from or diving into an entirely new project, going on walks has had a significant impact on my ability to perform at work.

I’ve realized that I work best when I get a full night’s sleep. I just needed to lay down and take a 20‑minute nap. consider taking a 5 or 10 minute break to go out and enjoy the sunshine.

Laughing is another thing you can do to impact your mental or physical productivity. When you laugh, you actually release chemicals in your brain. Laughing does something to your brain. It can be invigorating and change your mood. If you’re looking for something to replace quadrant 4 activities, the Not urgent, Not important things that have been stealing of your time, consider the so‑called brain games you can find online. You can play these games on your phone or your computer. They are designed to stimulate your brain.

Here’s a mind trick I sometimes do on myself. I’ll pretend I’m going out of town and only have a few hours to finish my work. I’ve realized right before a trip I’m super productive and get my important tasks done and delivered. Giving myself a short‑term deadline helps ensure I focus on the right tasks. If I only have, for example, 4 hours to work on a project, I feel an urgency to focus on and finish that project. I’m still amazed how much more I get done when I give myself this kind of artificial deadline.

Understanding Your Value

I want you to understand what you bring to the table. When you understand this, you begin to understand what you shouldn’t work on, perhaps what you should say no to or what you should delegate. When you understand the value of your productivity and assign a dollar amount to that value, you can better understand how and where you should work.

80/20 and Working on the Right Tasks

The basic idea is that there are certain things you’ll do that will have a much higher impact on the end result than a lot of other things you do

Mark LeBlanc’s Daily HVAs

Whatever your goals are, you can probably identify high value activities that will have a high impact on accomplishing your goal.

When we consistently focus on completing our three HVAs every day, we should see measurable results

The magnitude of the HVA, or the time required to complete the task, doesn’t necessarily matter.

Typically, I’ll work on my three high value activities in the morning. Once I’m done with my high value activities, I almost don’t care how the rest of my day goes. Of course, I still do things to help me be productive, but just knowing I got my three HVAs done gives me peace

How to Be Flexible When Change Is Imminent

In Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about the concept of your circle of influence. Your circle of influence includes things you have an influence on. Outside of your circle of influence are things you don’t have an influence on. He calls this the bigger circle, or the circle of concern, He says too often we worry about or spend time on things that are in the circle of concern, but they’re not in our circle of influence.

Stephen says we need to make sure we’re working on and worrying about things that are within our circle of influence. These are the things we have control over. We shouldn’t spend hardly any time in the circle of concern. One of my personal goals has been to grow my circle of influence, which might mean getting into a position where I have more control over things happening around me. I’ve done this throughout my career as I’ve taken management and leadership roles, and as I volunteered for roles that have given me growth opportunities. This whole concept is very empowering and freeing. It basically says look, spend your time and energy where you can actually make an impact, and don’t worry about all of that other stuff. Of course, even when you have expanded your circle of influence, there will be people or things that can change what you’re working on. This includes internal or external customers, the market or economy, competitors, your boss, your family or your health. Think about who or what has power to pull you outside of your circle of influence. Because we work in highly volatile environments with so many changes in technology, we should understand and accept change. We need to understand we’re not always going to be able to work on the things we want to work on. Understanding, accepting, and working within change are life skills that will help us at work. Having said that, when you become a master of time management, prioritizing and working within your circle of influence, you are in a position to stand your ground a little better and have more control over what you do. Instead of being controlled by the whims that seem to randomly come up, you can say, you know what, those look like great ideas, but they’re not aligned with the organization’s goals, or those are great ideas and I’ll be able to work on them once I finish some of these other tasks. Becoming a master of where you spend your time helps empower you in those situations.

Logging Your Time

If you feel like your schedule is out of control or you’re not making the progress you think you should, especially for the amount of work you do, I suggest you try a simple exercise. Start logging your time and analyze where you spend your time. You can do this manually with a spreadsheet or document, or even a piece of paper on your desk. Write down everything you do during the day. Even though you are in tech, manually writing this down might be a good way to figure out where you really spend your time. The key is to track everything, especially those 5‑minute breaks. You might learn that by the end of the day, the little breaks have added up. You could also look at time management or time logging apps.

Quality-based Productivity

Let’s talk about the impact the quality of our work has on productivity. The phrase that comes to mind, something I’ve heard a lot, is do it right the first time.

Actionable

Planning for Productivity

Under Observation / Experimentation. Let me try, how it works for me. I somehow like to do this activity in morning.

Early in my career, I learned about the power of creating a plan for my next day’s work.

I think it’s because I can focus on what is important for the next day instead of what is urgent, which is what I focus on if I plan the morning of. When you make a list of tasks to work on for the next day, make sure you schedule those tasks at the right time of the day.

My morning planning is more whimsical. If I plan the night before, emotions and urgency are not major contributors to how I plan. Planning the night before helps me focus on what I really need to work on, what is really important.