How To Prioritize Your Workload: 9 Steps and Tips

After thorough workload prioritization and dedicated team efforts, still feeling reaching nowhere near your goal?

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities. — Stephen Covey

That’s where you are going wrong. 

Knowing the tasks that require your immediate attention and those that can wait is a strategic skill. Because these decisions hugely influence efficiency and, eventually, your business’s bottom line.  

But trust me, when honed, nailing the prioritization game won’t be very difficult for you. 

Let’s decode how you can evaluate your top-priority tasks and make the most out of your daily grind. 

9 Steps To Prioritize Your Workload

Here are the steps you must follow to master the art of prioritization when everything seems important. 

1. Make a Master To-Do List 

First and foremost, prepare a to-do list of your workload. At the same time, you may feel compelled to skip this step and move projects to the progress stage. I strongly disapprove.

Be it routine tasks or longer-term projects, put together all the pieces that are scattered around. Reach out to everyone on board and pull out all the tasks and requests they could possibly create. 

After you have a clear representation of your workload, half of the battle is won. You can just start organizing and categorizing the tasks. This saves you from any mental exhaustion later on the stage. 

Tip: You can use a simple to-do list app or project management tool with handy features to list out all your projects.  

2. Identify Tasks Requiring Immediate Attention 

Since now you have a complete task list on the wall, it’s time to identify the big rocks. These are the high-impact tasks that make moving the needle forward easy. 

There are various parameters, including deadline urgency, customer expectations, stakeholder requests, and market demands, that influence the task priority. 

Do not get into the trap of easy wins and distract yourself with false progress. So, how do you identify the priority level of tasks? Well, there are a handful of prioritization methods available that get the job done for you. 

ABCDE Method

The ABCDE method is like a grade prioritization technique where you grade a task based on its urgency and priority. 

1. Critical tasks: That are both urgent and important.
2. High-priority tasks: That are important but not time-sensitive.
3. Medium priority tasks: That are urgent but not important.
4. Low-priority tasks: That are neither urgent nor important.
5. Eliminate the tasks that are irrelevant.

Eisenhower Power Matrix

With 50% of people vouching for the Eisenhower Matrix to be the most effective prioritization method, it is an Urgent-Important Matrix formed by Dwight Eisenhower, —  Former president of the United States.

The four quarant include: 

1. Urgent and important: Do now
2. Important, but not urgent: Schedule
3. Urgent but not important: Delegate
4. Neither urgent nor important: Eliminate

4Ds of Time Management

The 4Ds of the time management framework are “Do, Defer, Delegate, Delete.”

1. Do: the tasks immediately that can be done quickly 
2. Defer: the tasks that are not urgent and can be postponed to a later time
3. Delegate: the tasks to someone else based on their strengths and expertise
4. Delete: the task with no contribution from your list

The MoSCoW Method

MoSCoW Analysis, or MoSCoW method, is a prioritization technique developed by Dai Clegg, a software engineer. The technique prioritizes outcome-based categorization and splits your projects into four categories, namely: 

1. Must have: Outcomes that are necessary for overall project success 

2. Should have: Outcomes that are less significant compared to Must-have but crucial to final project delivery

3. Could have: These are the possible and optional outcomes that may roll out if you get enough resources 

4. Won’t have: These are the tasks that won’t be implemented

Rice Scoring

RICE is a powerful prioritization framework that takes into account the value and effort of potential projects.

Reach: It defines the number of people affected by the project.

Impact: It defines the level of the project’s positive impact on users or the business.

• 3 = massive impact
• 2 = high impact
• 1 = medium impact
• 0.5 = low impact
• 0.25 = minimal impact
• Confidence: A confidence percentage you have on a project. 
• 80% = high confidence score
• Below 50% = Unqualified
• Effort: An estimate of time and resources required to complete the project

Kano Model

Developed by Professor Noriaki Kano, the Kano Model is a framework for understanding customer satisfaction and prioritizing features in product development. 

The technique divides features into three categories: 

1. Basic Needs: These are the absolute must-haves, the absence of which may lead to dissatisfaction.
2. Performance Needs: if performed, these features result in more customer satisfaction. 
3. Delighters: These are the unexpected or innovative features that result in excitement. The absence of these does not cause any disappointment.

3. Evaluate Relative Priorities

Now that you have evaluated your priority list, chances of encountering tasks with similar priorities are inevitable. So, how do you decide between the two? What will you do in that scenario?

It’s simple —  using relative priority. 

Relative priority is a process of weighing the impact and importance of one task against the other. 

I recently confronted the dilemma of choosing between simultaneous priority tasks due to limited resource power.

Our marketing team found themselves at a crossroads where they couldn’t afford to compromise on either of the two tasks. Both the product launch and social media campaigns hold the same importance level. So, we all had to sit down and evaluate which of the two contributed more to our overall business objectives. 

And we turned to relative priority. 

Considering the limited resources at our disposal, employee skill set, and strategic alignment,  we found out that social media campaigns had more impact on brand visibility and stakeholder satisfaction. 

4. Schedule Your Tasks and Stick to It 

Once you have a clear priority list of tasks, it’s time to assign them and set a start and an end date for them. Make sure to provide clear instructions and what outcome is expected of it. 

Schedule your tasks based on their priority, set their dependency, and allocate resources accordingly. But do not forget to leave a scope for flexibility. You may come across situations where you have to shift the deadlines due to unplanned work requests. 

You can use a calendar tool to provide your team with a comprehensive overview of their schedule. Planning your schedule in advance is a great way to get things done faster and on time. 

5. Set Realistic Deadlines

When setting timelines, be realistic in your approach. Ensure they are approachable and not overambitious. 

Leave room for your employees to de-stress and have me-time. 

Give a thought to estimating how much time it will require to complete tasks. Because unrealistic timelines make your team struggle, leading to burnout and disappointment. On the contrary, realistic deadlines ensure on-time project delivery and positive outcomes.

6. Concentrate on the Most-Intense Task 

People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done. —  John Maeda

Now that you have made your task schedule, it’s time to carry out the most crucial tasks head-on.

Eat the Frog!

It is a technique focused on checking off the most demanding task from your list. These are the tasks that demand your utmost attention and effort. By addressing the most overwhelming tasks, you naturally lighten your mind and set a positive tone for the day. 

7. Do Not Practice Multitasking

Most people like to juggle multiple balls together. With only 2.5% of people able to handle multitasking effectively, expecting the same from everyone is an absolute no.

Avoid preaching multitasking; it's a productivity killer!

When you expect your team to tick too many tasks off your schedule, you push them to burnout levels. And compromise the quality of your output. Do not let unrealistic expectations take a toll on mental well-being and overall project success.

8. Delegate Strategically

I understand the position you are in, where it may feel like that every task needs your supervision. But trust me, it’s a myth.

Trust your team members and their efforts, and have confidence in your decision-making. Ensure you assign tasks based on skills, interests, and workload capacity.

By doing this, you can channel your attention to doing tasks requiring your immediate attention. 

9. Be Flexible in Shifting Between Priorities

Even when you have a prioritized list of tasks, any unexpected curveball can throw your well-laid plan off the road. 

Shifting priorities, absenteeism, scope creep, immediate urgency, and various other factors are some potential disruptors that can mess things up. 

That is why you need to maintain flexibility in your approach to workload prioritization. Leave buffer time in your prioritization list for unforeseen circumstances. Maintain your composure and set an example for your team in handling unexpected challenges. 

Quick 9 Tips for Prioritizing Your Workload

Now that you have got a hold on the steps to prioritize your workload, feeling overwhelmed is pretty obvious. 

So, to give your approach an extra positive shift, I’ve outlined some great prioritizing hacks. These aim not just to bring value but also to drive efficiency to your prioritization process. 

1. Be Mindful of Your Long-Term Goals: Before you start to plan, prioritize, and allocate, make sure to evaluate your company goals. Ensure your task priority aligns and contributes to the long-term objectives.

2. Break Down Tasks into Manageable, Smaller Chunks: On dividing larger tasks into smaller ones, you cut down the complexity levels into manageable stages. When your team finds tasks to be more approachable and achievable, they are less likely to procrastinate.

3. Consider Dependencies: When prioritizing tasks, considering task dependencies is extremely crucial. overlooking this aspect will stall up the task progression because the dependent task is still in the pipeline.

4. Avoid Distractions: Modern-day work setup is an area of countless distractions, be it chats, emails, calls, notifications, meetings, or a tap on the shoulder from a colleague. Motivate your team to tame these interruptions and reclaim their focus hours. 

5. Prioritize Communication: Project completion is a cohesive effort that requires you to align their efforts together and bring everyone on the same page. Promote open and transparent communication to eliminate any scope of misunderstanding and misinterpretations.

6. Automate Recurring Tasks: When prioritizing tasks, there is no point in investing efforts in performing recurring tasks. Instead, you can automate these tasks to save your time. And focus on other valuable and strategic aspects of your workload.

7. Reflect on Your Day: With 53.4% of people not reflecting on their time spent on tasks, the need to cultivate a culture of reflection becomes necessary.  Let your teams recognize and reflect on their achievements and mistakes. This allows them to make adjustments in their efforts. 

8. Make Regular Reviews: As an individual in the leading position, staying in sync with the overall workflow progress becomes your prime objective. Identify tasks that are done and those awaiting head start. Also, analyze emerging tasks and adjust your priority order accordingly.

9. Use Technology Tools: There are countless tools with user-friendly interfaces available in the market that streamline your workload. These tools offer a complete overview of your priorities, dependencies, and task progress, ensuring you and your team both stay well coordinated.

Conclusion

Teams that do not prioritize often end up in chaos. A single task that slips through the crack drags others along.

However, a structured and ordered framework brings clarity and efficiency to your workload. Investing time in thoughtful planning and organization sets the stage for high-performing and productive teams.

Lastly, remember that perfect prioritization doesn't exist. It’s a matter of continuously improving and evolving over time.