Another one of those "how do you manage your day?" type threads..
I've seen a lot of the kinds of thread which talk about handling your work day or similar, so I thought I would share something I picked up quite a while back, which makes my work day less stressful. It's all down to task prioritizing...
I used to think keeping a task list was a good thing... It is but it isn't enough, tasks need to be prioritized I discovered.
I used to think keeping a prioritized task list was a good thing... It is but it still isn't enough, it's how you tackle those tasks that matter I discovered.
OK let me try an explain, every task can be slotted into one of four simple categories of priority thus:
UI - Urgent Important tasks.
UNI - Urgent Not Important tasks.
NUI - Not Urgent Important tasks.
NUNI - Not Urgent Not Important tasks.
Logic dictates that one should tackle the UI tasks first right? The problem is that UI tasks usually really suck, as they have now become a problem. If you are anything like me, you start on your UI tasks each day, get sick of them and start playing around with the NUNI tasks, as they are usually much more fun.
So I eventually get my UI tasks finished, but I have spent so long playing with the easy NUNI tasks that some of the NUI tasks have turned into UI tasks by now, and this is where the magic is.
Every morning I always get a few NUI tasks out of the way, they are usually far less stressful than the UI tasks, and once they are dusted, they can never become UI tasks as they are gone from my task list. This means that when I get through all my UI tasks that day, then there are none of those left either, as I'm actually ahead of myself.
So that's my trick, the sweet spot is in the NUI tasks, and in stopping them from ever becoming UI.
Gotta love acronyms
I used to think keeping a task list was a good thing... It is but it isn't enough, tasks need to be prioritized I discovered.
I used to think keeping a prioritized task list was a good thing... It is but it still isn't enough, it's how you tackle those tasks that matter I discovered.
OK let me try an explain, every task can be slotted into one of four simple categories of priority thus:
UI - Urgent Important tasks.
UNI - Urgent Not Important tasks.
NUI - Not Urgent Important tasks.
NUNI - Not Urgent Not Important tasks.
Logic dictates that one should tackle the UI tasks first right? The problem is that UI tasks usually really suck, as they have now become a problem. If you are anything like me, you start on your UI tasks each day, get sick of them and start playing around with the NUNI tasks, as they are usually much more fun.
So I eventually get my UI tasks finished, but I have spent so long playing with the easy NUNI tasks that some of the NUI tasks have turned into UI tasks by now, and this is where the magic is.
Every morning I always get a few NUI tasks out of the way, they are usually far less stressful than the UI tasks, and once they are dusted, they can never become UI tasks as they are gone from my task list. This means that when I get through all my UI tasks that day, then there are none of those left either, as I'm actually ahead of myself.
So that's my trick, the sweet spot is in the NUI tasks, and in stopping them from ever becoming UI.
Gotta love acronyms
