Do you work effectively? Do you prioritize what is urgent or what is important? Today, at IBMH, we want to help you to effectively plan and prioritize your projects and daily tasks. Because prioritizing is one of the basic principles of time management. Effective time management leads to optimization, which immediately translates to an improvement in productivity. Are you in? Take note!
Some tips to effectively plan and prioritize your projects and daily tasks
- It’s ideal to have an official weekly plan in which you include all of the tasks or projects that you want to carry out. Not daily, not monthly, as a daily plan can make you feel pressured, and a monthly plan can make you feel complacent. Making a good plan of your weekly organization won’t take more than 20 to 30 minutes and will help you be much more productive. Without it, you’ll most likely end up managing your day-to-day by crisis.
- In the framework of your weekly plan, once you begin to organize your agenda of daily work, it’s essential that you never plan your activities or tasks using more than 75% of the time available each day. Keep in mind that setbacks or unforeseen tasks will always appear. You should have a percentage of that time to be able to resolve them.
- Say “NO” to distractions. People who are not organized or disciplined, who don’t have a clear sense of their priorities, will get distracted by practically anything that crosses their desk. This ultimately leads to missed deadlines and carelessness with important projects.
- Because of this, the most important things should ALWAYS be the first thing you do each day. It should be whatever you have to dedicate the most hours to in order to complete it as soon as possible. The most important things should never be at the mercy of less important things. That being said, remember that “important” and “urgent” are not the same thing.
Differences between important tasks and urgent tasks
To effectively plan and prioritize your projects and daily tasks in your hardware business, the first thing you must do is differentiate between what is important and what is urgent:
- Important tasks are those which lead you towards your goals. They are, in reality, the things that make you be more productive. In addition, they are all those tasks which have consequences if they are not done or not done on time. They must be done no matter what as quickly as possible if you truly want to reach your goals.
- Urgent tasks, on the other hand, are those which you can classify as pressing, absorbing, those that pressure you and demand immediate attention. They are things that “seem” like they have to be done immediately, although they probably are NOT very important.
Use the Eisenhower box method to organize your tasks and make the most of your day
Given all this, it is clear that, to improve productivity, you must have a clear classification of the things you do each day. This is fundamental to effectively plan and prioritize your projects and daily tasks. To do this, you can use the Eisenhower box strategy. A simple decision-making tool that eliminates repeated tasks and distinguishes between important and urgent so that you can get the most out of you day. This method separates actions into four categories:
A) IMPORTANT AND URGENT (DO)
Real problems or crises that have serious consequences if they are not done or if they are delayed.
B) IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT (SCHEDULE)
Things foreseen as important, but not urgent. This is where your weekly plan comes in.
C) NOT IMPORTANT BUT URGENT (DELEGATE)
These seem like they require our immediate attention since they are matters that are very pressing. Often, they are the concern of other people. Some examples are unproductive or poorly prepared meetings, inadequate management of email, calls from customers with problems, etc.
D) NOT URGENT AND NOT IMPORTANT (ELIMINATE)
Unforeseen things that come up during the day, such as interruptions for things that can wait, answering new emails that are not urgent, phone calls that can be made later, unexpected meetings, checking WhatsApp, etc.
As Eisenhower himself said: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” So, now that you know how to effectively plan and prioritize your projects and daily tasks, all that’s left is to put it into practice.
At IBMH, we want to help you reduce the time you dedicate to purchase management in China, so that you can dedicate 100% of your time to making your business grow. Contact us today! We’ll tell you how we can improve the profitability of your furniture and construction hardware imports!
