How to Prioritize to Avoid Feeling Overwhelmed at Work
Are you overwhelmed at work with too much on your plate. Here are eight great ideas to help you regain control!
1. Empower Others to Assist You!
Delegating tasks requires trust and empowerment. To effectively delegate, make sure values, objectives, and priorities are well communicated and understood. Be a consistent role-model for the priorities. Build trust amongst your team that you always act consistently with these values and priorities. Building trust will ultimately empower your team and support your delegation efforts - thus getting things off of your to-do list and multiply the effectiveness of your team!
2. Categorize Your Tasks as Urgent and/or Important
Think of your to-do list in terms of the dimensions of urgency and importance. Our tendency is to focus our time on urgent tasks without considering whether they are actually important. This chews up valuable time, causes distractions, and leads to that feeling of being overwhelmed! We instead should prioritize our efforts in this order;
Tasks that are both urgent and important (e.g. getting that really big order out that the customer needs today). These tasks clearly must be done and done now!
Tasks that are important but not as urgent (e.g. ensure that the inventory accuracy cycle counts are completed this week). These activities are important for delivering results and sustaining capabilities, but they can be done a little later - although it is really important that they be done.
Tasks that seem urgent but are of low actual importance (e.g. an anonymous phone call ringing, social media announcements, routine emails that you are cc’d on. Reduce these activities and do not let them interfere with the top two categories. Some items in this area, if still needed, could be targeted for delegation or done later. Their seeming urgency is false!
Items that are neither urgent nor important - time wasters! (e.g. gossiping, changing the screen wallpaper, checking your social media). Eliminate these!
3. Prioritize All Important Items
Now that you’ve eliminated or minimized and delayed all unimportant items, we are left with what actually must get done - but it’s still too much!
Here’s where knowing your overall priorities will make this an easy task. We simply categorize each task by which priority it falls under and then start working on the highest priorities.
Example: Many manufacturing or operational organizations create a priority hierarchy of
Safety
Quality
Delivery
Cost
If leadership has firmly established these priorities then an employee should in general work on issues effecting safety or quality before those impacting cost. (The good news here is that by making smart safety, quality, and delivery decisions, most cost topics will already be moving in the right direction!)
Of course, a task that is both urgent and important can trump a nonurgent item in a higher priority category. For example, loading a truck with an urgent order that must ship today would generally come before completing an important but not urgent quality audit. Keep in mind though that the audit probably has a due date that cannot be exceeded without business consequences - perhaps the due date is even based on regulations. If the due date is neigh, then the quality audit becomes more important than loading the truck! That’s perhaps a situation best avoided by planning ahead!
Some people find it useful to create subcategories of importance and urgency in order to help force-rank the order in which items are completed. Ultimately the idea is to understand what the order of the to-do list needs to be, in case you cannot get to everything.
4. Schedule time on your calendar to work on specific tasks
Treat the time block exactly as you would a scheduled meeting with a valued colleague. Leave your desk area if needed to be able to focus on the scheduled task. This will help you find the time needed to complete the task.
5. Eat the frog first
If you know there are items on your list that you are dreading, consider getting these out of the way early in the day when you likely have more energy and resilience. Completing a dreaded task will also take a weight off of your shoulders and allow you to be able to focus better on other tasks - free of the anxiety caused by worry.
6. Handle emails only once
Email is a huge time sucking black hole. Do not succumb to its gravity. Try to handle each email when you open it. If you are copied as an fyi or cc, get the needed value and immediately file it. If you were only cc’d, you do not need to take action or respond! If an email was directed to you and action is needed by you, try to take that action immediately. Putting the email back in your inbox just means you have to open it up again later and invest time getting again to where you already are! Get it off of your plate!
7. Prepare today for tomorrow
Take 5 minutes at the end of each day to list tomorrow’s most important tasks to be completed. This way you’ll be better able to disengage from work in your off time knowing that you’re prepared to hit the ground running tomorrow morning!
8. If all else fails and you simply cannot get everything done, you must seek help
Failing to seek help will only worsen the situation as the strain makes you less and less effective. Failing to seek help also guarantees time-sucking and uncomfortable conversations later when your boss realizes that key tasks aren’t getting done. When you seek help, be prepared to describe the steps you’ve gone through to eliminate wasted time and focus on priorities. Even if nothing immediately comes off of your plate, you will have established what tasks are at risk of not getting done!
Conclusion
Doing proper sorting of tasks, eliminating those that are not important, and force ranking the tasks will help ensure you aren’t wasting time and are also focused properly on the most impactful tasks for the organization.
