Adoption of prioritising

SKILL: 1. Dealing with complexity, coping with stress and uncertainty, and effective time management

EQF LEVEL (INTERNAL REFERENCE):   4

keywords 

1 time

2 priorities

3 technique

4 importance

5 work

Introduction: 

By the end of this LU, you will be able to make  priorities. 

Content:

According to Tim Wilson, the creator of time-management-success.com you should start prioritising only things that are deadline driven, especially if something is for today or tomorrow. 

He advocates a three-step approach when you are first beginning to prioritise:

1. Know what your work actually consists of and make a list including the deadlines.
2. Break down your list into three types of tasks: single tasks, recurring tasks and projects.
3. Prioritise only the urgent deadline driven work at first, until you get a handle on things and things are running more smoothly.

To handle  single tasks, you should do them the following day. You should draw a line under your list of single tasks and work on a finite number each day. You should start with those that are more urgent, and within a few days you should have cleared that list. 

Based on all the factors at the moment of choice (urgency, importance, time available, motivation, energy levels) you should select which task you want to do first, and then pick the next one. 

The aim is to always work on that day’s scheduled tasks. If you don’t finish one that day, add it to the next day. 

How do you determine the importance of each task, and when to complete the ones that you have identified?

We can use the Scales Method developed by Leon Ho for measuring a task’s importance by its cost and benefit as if you are metaphorically weighing them on scales. He describes four different combinations of cost and benefit:

• Low cost + high benefit: you should do these tasks first because they are the simplest ones to complete and help you get closer to your goal.

• High cost + high benefit: You should break this task into smaller ones that take less than an hour to complete, then re-evaluate those tasks to see their correct priority level

• Low cost + low benefit: This should be your lowest priority. You should either give yourself 10 minutes to complete this task or put them in between tasks as a break. 

• High cost + low benefit: you should review if these tasks are really necessary and think of ways of reducing the cost of doing them.

NOTES (IF RELEVANT): 

Resources:

• https://www.calcoast.edu/news/prioritizing-your-life-how-what-when-why-guide

Language point

Read the following sentence.

You should either give yourself 10 minutes to complete this task or put them in between tasks as a break. 

The underlined word is a Modal verb of suggestion/recommendation. Like all the other modal verbs it always has the same form and is always followed by an infinitive verb. Again like other modal verbs, to form the past of ‘should’ add ‘have’ + past participle of the relevant verb. Thus the past form is ‘should + have + past participle’.

Note the following examples.

You should go to sleep. = I am suggesting/recommending that you go to sleep.

They should have eaten less. = The right thing to have done in the past was to not eat so much.