If you’re looking for a way to keep track of all your obligations and use your time wisely, then you should consider using a prioritization grid, a visual method to think about prioritization for when you have too much to do, and too little time to do it all.
What is the Prioritization Grid?
A prioritization grid is an organizational system where you sort all of your tasks based on different factors such as time or importance.
Each prioritization grid works on a 2×2 axis.
For example, you may prioritize tasks based on Importance x Urgency, Impact x Effort, Risk x Reward, etc.
The benefit of the prioritization grid is that after arranging your tasks or projects based on this system, choices regarding which projects to pursue become more clear.
Priority Grid vs. Priority List
The strength of a Priority Grid, rather than a simple task list, is that it helps you make an informed choice, rather than arbitrarily choosing which tasks should be worked on first.
Furthermore, you can evaluate tasks based on different criteria, depending on your goals.
One great example of this is a Cost x. Benefit analysis.
Usually, in business, projects with the lowest cost and highest potential benefit should be pursued.
Prioritization Grid Styles
The Eisenhower Grid
You’re the person that knows yourself best, so you should figure out how you want to organize and prioritize your tasks based on how you personally work.
If you’re not sure where to start, one of our favorite prioritization grids is the Eisenhower Matrix.
When using the Eisenhower Grid, you organize your tasks according to their importance and their urgency, which makes it easier for you to figure out how to best spend your time.
Priority Matrix’s default project grid is organized based on this system.
- Critical and Immediate: things with upcoming deadlines that are really important
- Critical and not Immediate: important things, but not due anytime soon
- Immediate but not Critical: things that should be done soon, but aren’t very important
- Uncategorized: less important things that don’t have to be done soon
Prioritization Grid Example
As you can see, all of the tasks are sorted in the grid based on the Eisenhower Matrix’s factors of importance and urgency.
1-3-9 Prioritization Grid
Another system that works well with the prioritization grid is the 1-3-9 productivity system. It’s a system designed to get a lot of work done by arranging tasks in order of their importance and clearing out “levels” of tasks.
Effort-Impact Grid
One more type of grid that I would like to mention is the Effort Impact Grid. It arranges priority based on a combination of effort and impact.
- High Effort; Low Impact: tasks that take a lot of effort, but don’t have a big impact
- High Effort; High Impact: tasks that take a lot of effort and have a high impact
- Low Effort; Low Impact: tasks that take little effort and have a small impact
- Low Effort; High Impact: tasks that take little effort, but have a high impact
This is what it looks like in action:
If you feel like none of these styles of organization work for you, Priority Matrix allows you to rename the different quadrants of the grid to your liking, as well as change the colors of the grid so that you can pick what’s easiest on your eyes.
The best way to see if something works for you is to try it out, and we make this easy by giving anyone who signs up a FREE 14 day trial, where you can take advantage of our variety of free templates of grids for brainstorming, project analysis, and more.
Check out what we have to offer by signing up here!