Prioritize What’s in YOUR Control

Happy Thursday all,

Last week, I mentioned a “prioritization process” I use each morning to help me focus in on what has to be delivered that day, that week, and the following week, and so forth. 

Sharing a post I did a few years back to try to motivate some toward better prioritization.  Hope you don't mind the "repeat" post.  

Prioritization saves time and money.  If we can all start to plan and sequence our work better, over time, we will save ourselves time to free up and do other things and save money. 

Efficiency and effectiveness should not be a reactionary trigger, it should be our normal mindset.  In order to achieve that mindset, we must prioritize our work and how we go about doing it.

Previously, I would have never-ending to-do lists with 12, 20, 30+ items on them.  Most days, it would start with a manageable number, say ten, but soon another great idea ;) or a fire drill and the list would go beyond control and I would find myself staying late or coming in early.  I admit, many an all-nighter has been pulled into order to cross everything off the list.   As we all recognize, that is not manageable and certainly not sustainable. 

“Lots of times you have very good ideas,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg when describing ruthless prioritization. “But they’re not as good as the most important thing you could be doing. And you have to make the hard choices.”

So, having an unmanageable amount of items on your daily to-do list is a losing battle. How are we able to focus on tasks that are in our circle of control and add value?

I realized I needed a way to prioritize my work on things that 1) add value, 2) that I control, and 3) on importance.   

Enter Stephen Covey and his book First Things First. 

This is how it works

Objective:  Prioritize your to-do list based on what you can control and then what is important (or not important) and then what is urgent (or not urgent). 

1. Grab your list of items you need to work on. 
2. What is on the list that you can control?  Mark those things with CV (Control - Value)   
1. Prioritizing what you can control.  Focus on tasks that are in your circle of control. 
2. Recognize that when you spend time in the outer circle, your circles of influence and control shrink.
3. The more time you spend in the middle two circles, the larger they get.
3. Using a basic prioritization matrix or the Not so Basic - Covey model (examples below) to determine if your item is low/high and high/low

 

	High Impact	Low Impact
Low Effort	Yes	Maybe
High Effort	Yes	No

And, remember prioritizing is not a one-time exercise. It is essential to weekly review and adjust the prioritization matrix.  Use the roadmap to ensure leadership is in agreement with prioritization and then report to the team to keep everyone’s priorities aligned.

And, yes, I use the extended model (see below with my markup)

To all celebrating Janmashtami, I hope that you dance, eat, fly kites, and celebrate the goodness of his birth!  For my family, I ordered a plate of sweets that we will be enjoying during the movies tonight. 

Happy Thursday all,

-srt