Essential Guide For Priorities Setting Up

Some days are easy, quite relaxed and smooth. Everything goes as it should and you know perfectly step by step what to do next. Unfortunately, these are mostly weekends or holidays, when it matters less if you do everything you have planned or leave some of the things on your list for the next free time.

Usually, you feel totally overwhelmed by the things that absolutely need to be done today and they need to be done by you. On those days every hour feels like a few minutes only and every minute feels like a few seconds. You simply do not know where and how to start with this bunch of stuff but you already feel tired and demotivated to do it. Your stress is growing every second and you are becoming completely lost. Few concepts can actually help your mental sanity and manage your actions during the most difficult days. I’d say you need at least one method of planning to have full visibility and awareness of all the things to be done in time and one method of prioritizing to decide easily what comes first and what can wait for Priorities Essential Guide.

Planning and Organising with TODOS and CHECKLISTS

I have the feeling that without planning and organizing methods I would be totally lost, especially those days when at least one million things seem to be needed shortly and I seem to be the one and the only person who can do them all. Various TODO lists guide me through the day.  I use several of them in different styles and technologies for different occasions.

For business life, I use classic Outlook where I keep my calendar (meetings, conference calls, video calls, time for materials preparation, etc.) and my to-do lists (by importance). I have never used the Notes which are an integral part of Outlook. I do not see any use for it. However, I started to use Notes on my mobile. I keep five or six different to-do lists. One of them is called “Tomorrow”. It has become part of my nightly ritual to check the weather for the next day and to look at my “Tomorrow” list just before I totally relax with my book in bed. By reviewing things that were planned for today I can make an informed decision to eliminate them or to add the new activities that will get the priority next morning.  Usually, these are business related items that require action in the first part of a day. I try to address them first thing in the morning.

For the home stuff, I have totally “old school” metal white-board with markers and magnets to put our house and food-related notes on – “plumber for dishwasher needed”, “brown sugar” or “order water”. Sometimes I put additionally magnets on the same whiteboard to temporary keep the paper stuff me and my husband need to remember – “delivery notice”, “telecom contract”, “promo leaflet for the bed mattress” or “recipe for the home-made bread”.

For the repetitive business events, I use CHECK-LISTS.  They are fabulous for the big project launch, analytical tools connection, your website audit, competitive review reporting. But you can also use them for any big private event preparation like the 50th anniversary of your parents’ wedding for more than 100 guests. In a nutshell, check-lists help you keep the consistency of tasks and follow the completeness of your actions. They guide you through the process step-by-step. They are like pre-flight procedure in aviation safety that ensures critical items are not overlooked.