How to pri­or­i­tize: 9 methods to help you get started

As a new company founder, you’ll often be con­front­ed with a seemingly in­sur­mount­able amount of tasks – and where do you start? First and foremost: stay calm. Even if it may look that way, not every task has the same urgency. Take a critical look at your workload, and you'll quickly see that there are important tasks to pri­or­i­tize, but other tasks don’t need your immediate attention. Learn how to pri­or­i­tize your tasks sensibly, even if sudden schedule changes occur. After all, a well-struc­tured workload means more mo­ti­va­tion, more energy, and more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Even though there are many different guides on the topic of how to organize your life, in the end all tips boil down to the classic to-do list. This should be a literal pen-on-paper list – not just one that you have in mind. Write down all tasks that need to be done. Also note the date on which you made a new entry. This allows you to keep track of how long you have been post­pon­ing certain tasks.

This general list should serve as the basis for a struc­tured workload. Keep it handy at all times – after all, you need to update the list regularly.

In order to process your to-do list ef­fi­cient­ly, the day and the week can be used as short-term planning periods. At the beginning of each planning period, transfer the pending tasks from your general list to a daily or weekly list. The so-called Eisen­how­er principle helps you to decide how to pri­or­i­tize. Named after the former US President, and often quoted in counselor reading, it suggests to first pri­or­i­tize the most urgent/important tasks, and to sort out every­thing else after that according to im­por­tance.

Matters that should be dealt with sooner or later are con­sid­ered important because they have ad­van­tages for your long-term goals. Urgent tasks are those where negative con­se­quences can be expected if they are not completed on time. These include, for example, deadlines set by customers, or non-ne­go­tiable paperwork deadlines. The Eisen­how­er principle rec­om­mends pri­or­i­tiz­ing these tasks and moving important but not urgent matters to another daily or weekly list.

To il­lus­trate this, the Eisen­how­er principle can be rep­re­sent­ed in a chart, which is divided into the cat­e­gories “important” and “not important” as well as “urgent” and “not urgent.” This results in four task fields, which are marked in al­pha­bet­i­cal order, whereby “A” has the highest priority and “D” can be postponed:

Another useful tool for pri­or­i­tiz­ing the tasks on your to-do list is the 80:20 rule, also called Pareto principle. This means that with 20 percent of the effort (input) 80 percent of the result (output) is already achieved. So, for example, focus on the three primary tasks in your workload and still achieve high per­for­mance.

All others can be placed at the end of the list and noted on a second list, which you only take to hand once the primary tasks have been completed. Simple routine matters that require little time and con­cen­tra­tion can be confident in times when you feel less efficient (for example, right after your lunch break). After all, studies indicate that people are only really pro­duc­tive for about 3 hours in an 8-hour workday.

If you want to find out what part of your workload is 20 percent, the following questions can help you:

• What is the primary goal of my company?
• Which tasks bring me and my company to this goal the fastest?
• What are the key drivers of my company?
• Which tasks must be fulfilled to continue to guarantee the viability and ability of the company?
• How many people depend on the com­ple­tion of a par­tic­u­lar task?

It is very likely that one of the three most relevant tasks on your list is one that you find par­tic­u­lar­ly difficult. This is usually a par­tic­u­lar­ly complex matter, which takes a lot of time and delays a feeling of success. This task is called the “frog” and is based on the North American English proverb to “eat the frog,” which means that if you eat a live frog right after getting up in the morning, the worst of that day is already behind you.

Fig­u­ra­tive­ly speaking, this means that at the beginning of each working day you should always do the most difficult task first. To identify them, all you have to do is ask yourself: “What makes me feel most un­com­fort­able?”. Keeping a difficult task in the back of your mind also takes energy away un­nec­es­sar­i­ly – after all, it has to get done at some point anyway.

Another method to answer the important issue of how to pri­or­i­tize is time man­age­ment. All points on your to-do list need clear deadlines to ensure that they are processed on time. While the deadlines for urgent tasks are usually set by the customer, you have a free hand on matters that are only clas­si­fied as “important.” Your ob­jec­tives should not be too op­ti­mistic: If you squeeze too many tasks in too short a time period, frus­tra­tion is in­evitable. To get a realistic im­pres­sion of the necessary effort required, it helps to divide each task into in­di­vid­ual steps and to place each step in your list as well.

Good sched­ul­ing also includes being able to react flexibly to un­fore­seen changes. So get used to leaving room for possible in­ter­rup­tions in the prepa­ra­tion of each day's schedule. If an important call suddenly comes forcing you to discard your set pri­or­i­ties, you should have enough buffers to rearrange your workload to pri­or­i­tize it at any time.

Even if some are still convinced, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly seen there is no such thing as mul­ti­task­ing. It is im­pos­si­ble for the human brain to perform two or more complex tasks si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and certainly not perform them to the same standard. Instead, the mind quickly moves back and forth between the in­di­vid­ual tasks, focusing only partly on each.

The result is that tasks are only processed su­per­fi­cial­ly, and therefore the outcome is usually sub-par. In addition, this misguided mul­ti­task­ing attempt costs a lot of energy and causes stress, which demon­stra­bly reduces pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Instead, re­searchers and advisors unan­i­mous­ly recommend working through the points on a to-do list one after the other and under no cir­cum­stances at the same time.

The fact that many tasks can only be completed half-heartedly at the same time is clearly a reason to forget about mul­ti­task­ing. However, the opposite is also not rec­om­mend­ed. We are talking about per­fec­tion­ism. If you con­stant­ly check your work, and attach excessive im­por­tance to details that are actually neg­li­gi­ble, this costs time and energy, and probably won’t be worth it. The Pareto principle can also be applied here: if 20 percent of the input already accounts for 80 percent of the output, the remaining 80 percent of the workload is only re­spon­si­ble for 20 percent of the result.

To pri­or­i­tize your workload as ef­fi­cient­ly as possible, you should be content to do many jobs “well,” and not perfectly. This is often better than focusing all of your energy on a single task, while all the other work gets piled up. To do this, however, you must accept the fact that errors can happen. Be open to criticism and learn from it, instead of wasting your time trying to deliver a perfect result right from the start, and be happy with something that is good enough.

Filtering your to-do list by “urgent” and “important” is already a step in the right direction. After all, you have to be aware that you can only do damage control in any case – at the end of the day or week some points on your plan will probably still be unchecked.

Every e-mail and every chat message you reply to is a dis­rup­tion to your workflow. The more often you are torn out of your workflow, the greater the stress. Your goal should therefore be to strictly prevent such dis­trac­tions. In most cases, this includes private WhatsApp messages, non-essential phone calls, and messages to your social media accounts.

As hard as it may be for you, it is well worth trying to de­ac­ti­vate instant alerts in your mail program, on your smart­phone, and on Facebook, and to set a time in which you can complete your cor­re­spon­dence in one go. This can be after lunch or just before the end of your shift, but in any case only after you have “eaten the frog.”

Es­tab­lish­ing a func­tion­ing workload structure is a longer process that can be con­tin­u­ous­ly developed once you’ve gained some ex­pe­ri­ence. To get an overview of your progress and recurring problems, you should get a logbook in addition to your lists. Using this you can record how long certain tasks really take to set more mean­ing­ful deadlines. You can also note by what and how often you are dis­tract­ed during the course of a day – and take ap­pro­pri­ate coun­ter­mea­sures in this regard as well.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, constant self-re­flec­tion enables you to implement these ideas even better in your daily work – since practice makes perfect – or good enough!