As managers, one of our important responsibilities is to set priorities and to help our employees set priorities in terms of what needs to be accomplished. Without establishing priorities, it is too easy for one of the following to take place:
- Wrong priorities are assumed—either too high or too low
- No distinction is made between what’s really important & what can be delayed
- Everything is considered to be a “must do now”
The Pareto Principle applies to priorities–20% of priorities will give you 80% of productivity/results—that’s a 4-fold return.
All work has to be viewed in the context of two questions: (1) How important is it? and (2)How urgent is it?
Based on those two factors (importance & urgency), all work then typically falls into 1 of the following 4 priority categories:
- High Importance/High Urgency
- Do these things first!
- High Importance/Low Urgency
- Set deadlines for completion!
- Work into your daily routine!
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- Low Importance/High Urgency
- Do after “High Importance/High Urgency”!
- Low Importance/Low Urgency
- Put aside, but commit “X” amount of time each day, week or month towards getting them done.
The 3 “E’s” of prioritizing are:
- Evaluate – What are my priorities?
- Estimate – How much time will each take?
- Eliminate – What is on my “to do” list that does not need to be done or can be assigned to someone else?