Prioritizing on a Daily Basis

As you take on more and more responsibilities and start managing larger teams, prioritizing on a daily basis becomes key to having both successful career and leading a healthy life.

Managing Your Calendar

In a large organization with a number of divisions, sub divisions, hierarchies, every decision requires inputs and approvals from multiple teams. The result is a number of meetings throughout the day with your calendar booked from morning to evening without any break.

While some of these meetings are necessary for decision making and communication across teams, many of these meetings tend to be inefficient considering the large audience that participating in the meetings. How do you prioritize these and still find time on your calendar for the things you must do?

Start early, start thinking

One thing that helps get through the days and stay above the chaos is to start the day a bit early before the scheduled meeting start. This gives you some time to think about the day and plan the priorities for the day. Also slot some time to do some of the important work that needs to be done, specifically the ones that require creative thinking.

Pick your meetings, decline the rest

Pick the critical meetings that you do need to attend and accept them on your calendar. Remove the ones that you can move out or ask others to attend. This will give you some breathing room during the day and helps you really look at what is really important.

List the top 3 for the day, stay focused

List the top 3 things that you want to accomplish during the day, no more, no less. During the day, stay focused on handling items that are related to this top 3. Everything else get lower priority.

Mid day review

After lunch, even if you are in meetings, take quick few seconds to asses where you are in terms of your top 3 tasks. If you haven't made much progress, re-adjust the rest of the afternoon to get these done. If you are on track or ahead, keep the efforts going.

End of the day cleanup

At the end of the day, review and do a quick cleanup of your mailbox. Decide if you can finish the top 3 or if any needs to rollover to next day. Record a quick summary of your achievements for the day.