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Today isn't a day for task lists from work. But as you enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday, you may want to take time to ponder an approach that could improve your to-do lists. Personal effectiveness writer Avani Mehta, on the Dumb Little Man blog, offers an intriguing way to prioritize the many items on your daily to-do list:
1. The first step is to remove things on your list that should be delegated and items that you wish you could do but know in reality you won't be able to.
2. Create a table with seven columns, in the following order: Task Name; Urgent and Important; Huge Benefit to Completion; Large Consequences for Delay; High on Irritation/Nagging; Estimated Time to Complete; Yes Count.
3. In the first column, Task Name, list all the tasks left after your filtering process. This is a list of what you intend to execute.
4. For the next four categories, answer the following questions, in turn for each task, with a Yes or a No:
Is my task urgent and important?
Do I really see a benefit when this task is completed?
Will I face negative consequences if this project doesn't get done?
Is this task constantly nagging and irritating to me and my peers?
5. You are now at the Estimated Time column, where you want to enter a solid estimate of how long each task will take.
6. Now you consider the Yes Count column. For each task, add up how many Yes answers it drew when you asked yourself the questions about urgency, benefit to completion, consequences for delay, and irritation factor.
7. You now have established your priorities through the Yes Count, establishing a broader framework than most of us usually use for that decision. With these priorities, and the assistance of the Estimated Time column, you can start attacking and scheduling your to-do items.
"For instance, if a meeting gets cancelled and you suddenly have a free hour, look at your list and choose to knock something out that takes less than an hour. Having this list handy and predetermined, will prevent you from sitting there for 20 minutes wondering what you should work on, or worse, visiting your inbox and simply killing an hour bouncing between Facebook and e-mail," Ms. Mehta writes
8. You can customize this approach, by adding parameters that reflect your situation better and subtracting those that don't quite fit. If you are working on a team, she suggests adding a column marked Has Dependencies, to help you first pick the tasks that others need you to complete so they can carry out their own work. Other parameters might include: Can become a Bottleneck, or Customer Impact.
Harvey Schachter