Prioritization Tips For Neurotic Optimizers (Like Me)

Facing your fears, goal-alignment, identifying leverage

Katrine Tjoelsen
June 24, 2023

No matter how efficient you are, you won’t get through an expansive task list.

And no matter how good you are at saying no, you won’t get enough time for all your tasks.

Prioritization is the only way out.

I’ve learned this the hard way. I have so many projects I’m excited about and an endless stream of tasks. If I try to do them all (and inevitably fail), I’m left with no time for friends and exercise.

How To Prioritize

You may be familiar with the Eisenhower Method which groups tasks into four categories:

(i) The urgent and important (do right away)
(ii) The non-urgent and important (block time to do)
(iii) The urgent and unimportant (delegate or skip)
(iv) The non-urgent and unimportant (drop)

But we tend to put too many tasks into categories (i) and (ii). Despite our intentions, we often merely categorize tasks into urgent and non-urgent.

Or our task list is a mess altogether.

What’s important

Ask yourself these questions to assess whether a task is important:

“Does this task make progress on one of my top three goals?” The foundation for high performance is clarity on your goals and aligning your tasks with them.
“If I only accomplished one thing today, would I be content if it was this?” Ask this upfront to avoid ending the day wondering what you actually accomplished that day.
“What am I delaying because I’m scared?” I’ve delayed many uncomfortable conversations, yet they’re often the most helpful.

What’s not important

Similarly, we can get better at recognizing unimportant tasks. My unimportant tasks are often ones that…

…I keep pushing from one day to the next
…aim to perfect something which doesn’t need perfection (like slide design for a small internal meeting)
…no one else notices not being done

The above are correlations, not causations. Just because others don’t notice a task not being done, does not make a task unimportant 🙈

Getting more from less

Finally, you want to spend your time on high leverage tasks.
Leverage = Value / Effort

Value is how much progress that task creates, and Effort is how much energy it requires. A high leverage task create a lot of progress for a little bit of effort.

Your Turn

Block time this coming Monday morning to review your task list. For each task, assess:

Is the task actually important? Use the above questions to be more selective.
How much leverage does the task have?