I have unofficially taken a very long leave from blogging. It’s been 3 months since I last wrote an entry. And to tell you the truth, it’s like torture thinking about my unupdated blog.

I have actually been transfered to Sabah and there are a lot of things I need to do for the past 3 months; pending jobs to be finished, examination to study, new mill to familiarize.

If there’s anything I can learn from all the experience is that “When life gives you 1000 things to do, prioritize”. These are a few tips to be better at prioritizing that I’ve learnt the hard way.

1) Check with your religion first

This is actually a no brainer. But when you are in doubt on what to do, check with your religion. What are the priorities in your religion. Religion in my opinion, is a handbook to living your life. It should be able to solve every question you asked.

Even for an atheist, I still believe that their principles and attitude towards life will be their religion. Stick to that and you know you will do fine.

2) 80/20 Pareto Rule

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, this rule rocks! For the benefit of those who are not familiar with it, let me try to explain the whole idea. According to Pareto, if you have 100 workers in your company, rest assured that there are 20 of them that can do 80% of the job. Once we have identified these 20 workers, you can actually sack the remaining 80 workers and still manage to get 80% of your business done.

The same goes to your daily job. Identify the 20% of the job that if you finish it, you can smilingly go back home knowing that you have finished the vital jobs of your day.

3) Review Review Review

I repeated the word “Review” three times (four times if include this one) because it is the best word to help you manage your life. Our priorities change with time. Immediately when we wake up, our most important priority is to brush our teeth. Once we do that, we have to review our task and identify the next most important priority. In this specific example, the next most important thing is to put on a suit and go to work.

This Reviewing process can sometimes be just as fun as playing an adventure type computer game, where you finish one task after another.

4) Most Important Task

For some, finishing off one task after another can be very exhausting. I personally believe this tool, which is called “Most Important Task” or MIT for short, is the best way to go for you guys. Before you go to sleep tonight, identify the 3 most important tasks that you want to be done tomorrow. When you wake up tomorrow, focus all your energy to get these 3 done at all cost. Once they are done, treat yourself with an ice cream or a walk on the beach. You know very well you deserve it.

Of course, there’s no point if you identify your 3 most important tasks of the day as eat, sleep and watch television.

5) Categorize your goals

This is another great tools that you can use to ensure that all your goals are met. First, categorize all your goals into three groups.

Group 1 – Life goals

• You have to put all your life goals here. These are the goals that if met you will be satisfied with your life. Typical examples of life goals are live longer, travel around the world, become famous worldwide etc.

Group 2 – 10 years goals

• 10 years goals are goals that must be met within 10 years. Some examples of such goals are like becoming a manager, lose 100 lb of weight etc.

Group 3 – Now goals

• The Now goals are goals that can be achieved now if we start working on it. An example is like this blog post I’m working on. If I do it now, I will finish it today.

Once you have identified your goals’ categories, try to work on each category of goals in one day. You could for example, aim to save $50 and put it in your travel-around-the-world fund, jog for 30 minutes and finish your blog post in 1 hour.

You might not notice it, but you have basically achieved your three most important goals in just 1.5 hours today. Isn’t that great?

Conclusion

Prioritizing has always been the challenge to productivity. I guess that is why God only gives us two hands. It is to remind us that there are just so much we can do, so we have to choose what we want to do wisely.

– I wonder –
Any other techniques to prioritize better that you can share?

——— Personal Note ————
My first priority will always be family. However, there are times when something else come up and it’s so urgent that it requires my fullest attention and thus I can only see the family a few hours in a day.

Luckily I am blessed with an understanding wife. Thank you dear. I can’t imagine going through all this without you.

Photo Credit – Redvers