Managing your priority has never been more important in the current era of information overload. Everyday, you, me, and everyone around us experience task paralysis, i.e., you have so many things to do, you are unable to decide what to work on next.
Priority Matrix is designed to solve this very problem. The approach is simple: you should only work on items that are in important, starting with the ones that are most urgent. Ultimately, managing priorities is half about identifying what you have to do and the other half is about identifying when to do it. To put it simply, every single task falls into these two dimensions: have to do, don’t have to do; now or later.
The next logical question is: how do we know whether we have to do something, and whether we have to do it now?
Consider these questions as your litmus test:
Important or not:
Is this growing my organization?
If I don’t do this, will my organization collapse?
Is this taking my organization to where it needs to be?
Urgent or not:
Is there a hard due date to this? Is it a blocking process?
If I don’t do this now, does the next sequence of activity start happening?
Can I only do this now (time sensitive)?
Finally if we tie it together:
Important & urgent items:
Things that are growing my organization and blocks everything else so it must be done now.
Things that will cause collapse of my organization if I don’t do them now.
Important & not urgent items:
Things that will cause collapse of my organization but I can solve them anytime within the next 6 months.
Things that takes my organization to where it needs to be but it’ll depend on some events that precedes them.
Not important & urgent
Things that have a due date, but doing it does not materialize to growing my organization nor keeping it afloat. Let’s not do these at all.
Things that does not take my organization to where it needs to be but I can only do them now. Skip these, and see what happens.
Not important & not urgent
These things never have to be worked on. With Priority Matrix, we converted this quadrant to “uncategorized”, which is your inbox instead.
I hope this provides a starting framework for each day that you work as you evaluate what you need to work. Priority Matrix makes it simple because it creates these categories for you automatically, helping you visually see what you need to work on. If we could save you time and help you focus on a single task, we know Priority Matrix is already worth the cost for the year.
Ready to try Priority Matrix as your primary priority management software? Check it out here: Priority Matrix for Windows, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Priority Matrix also works for teams and businesses.
Goodluck and let us know if it works for you.