How To
How I Set Priorities: Get Things Done
Ross Kimbarovsky asks: “How do you decide what to do next? Should you write a blog post? Answer emails in your inbox? Make several sales calls? Spend time on Twitter? Or should you call a team meeting to discuss a customer problem?
Ross adds that successful people are successful in part “because they are good at setting priorities. And while there are many different ways to set priorities, I wanted to share how I set my own priorities.”
Getting Things Done: How I Set Priorities
For me, it’s all about planning. And planning, by extension, is decision-making.
- Start the night before. At the end of the day, I review what I’ve done. It takes only 5 min. What did I forget to do? This goes to the top of next day’s schedule.
- I get up around 5.30 am to get a head start and beat the kids getting up.
- I ignore the emails for 1 hour. Nothing is that urgent.
- I plan my day – what is critical goes first, then what I need to do and the rest can wait
- When all of this is done, I check emails, watch cats doing ninja tricks and what not
- I have a super quick review at 11.45 before lunch
- I have a super quick review at 2.45 to make sure I’m still on track.
All this is done on my pad. Writing it down seems to make it more permanent. I like to cross things off when I’ve conquered a task!
Small rewards as we go along. Nothing fancy.
Closing my inbox during the work day was/is the biggest way to save time. And, of course, turn off the phone.
How do you organize your day?
