Before hiring Prialto’s virtual assistant, Mary*, a successful entrepreneur and corporate communications coach, noticed that her work was affecting her mental health.
Her boundaries around work were not defined, she was always in a hurry to do things, and it quickly became clear that the pace was unsustainable.
This is the reality of many managers who struggle with prioritizing goals.
When you don’t prioritize your goals, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the details and lose track of what’s really important, — And this can take a toll both at work and in your personal life.
What is the most important step in prioritizing goals?
First, clarify what is most important to you.
Once you know what’s most important to you, you have a road map for prioritizing your goals.
Define priorities through self-inquiry
Entrepreneur and author of books, Derek SieversTalks about prioritizing goals according to your “hierarchy of values”.
he offers Ask yourself what is most important with either/or questions, and Placing your answers in a hierarchy So:
If you had to choose, would you choose to have more money or time?
Travel or stability?
Do you prefer to learn or create?
Do you prefer to focus on family or self-care?
Go through all of your goals and compare them to each other to find the ones that come out on top. Silvers goes further and suggests that you build your entire life around your top priority, and let go of “almost everything else.”
This approach may seem limiting at first, because just like everyone else, you want it all!
But the truth is, while you may be able to achieve many of your goals in your lifetime, you can’t do them all at once.
You can’t write 50 pages of a novel, enjoy dinner, direct your child’s play and run a marathon in the same day. That’s just not how life works. Some concessions will have to be made so that you can focus on what is most important to you right now.
Decisiveness and honesty are key to prioritization.
Only when you are honest about what you currently want and need in life can you achieve what you want to achieve.
In an interview on The Tim Ferriss ShowJames Clear makes this question actionable by asking, “What am I optimizing for [in my life right now]?”
And he goes on to point it out Priorities change over time.
Your priorities today are not the same as they were 5 years ago, and they will change again in the future.
You will even have different priorities that day. In the morning your priority might be focusing on a work project while in the afternoon your priority might be exercise, and in the evening your priority shifts again to spending time with your family. But you need to be clear about what is important to you before you can prioritize your goals.
Another reason to understand what is most important to you is that you are Don’t let other people’s goals dictate your life.
Society, colleagues, family and friends will have ideas about how you “should” spend your time. And you probably internalized many of these “needs” without realizing it. But the fact is, other people’s priorities won’t make you happy if they aren’t yours.
If you want to differentiate your values from other people’s opinions, you might consider another question suggested by James Clear:
“Does this activity fill me with energy or drain me of energy?”
Activities that align with your personal values will energize you, but if you feel drained doing them, you’re probably not being completely honest with yourself about what you want. You can still do activities that drain your energy if they are necessary to achieve certain goals, but you may want to put them lower on your list of priorities and spend less time on them if you can.
Create a plan to prioritize your goals
Once you know what your priorities are, the next step is to create a plan.
The Get Things Done Method (GTD)
of David Allen GTD method Recommend 5 steps to prioritize your goals.
- capture– Write, record or collect anything that catches your attention.
- clarify– If it is actionable, find out what steps you should take
- organize– Content classification in appropriate places
- reflecting– Review and update content frequently
- Strive to touch– Use this system to make action decisions with confidence and clarity
Brain mapping
You may find mind mapping helpful in this process as well, especially if you are a visual learner. Mind mapping lets you break down and link ideas as an intuitive visual representation, so you can easily prioritize goals and always know the next step you need to take.
we love MindMeister and KugelBut there are many mind mapping tools to choose from.
Do one thing at a time
Once you see all the steps you need to take in one place, you can use your hierarchy of values to make an implementation plan to reach your goals. But don’t try to do everything at once.
The most effective way to prioritize your goals is To Discover the single most impactful next step you can take.
In their best-selling book, the one thingGary Keller and James Papasen recommend figuring out the “one thing” you really want to achieve, and asking yourself what step you can take this day/week/month that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?
Every effort does not bring the same result.
So, if you could only do one thing, what would that one thing be?
The Eisenhower Matrix and the Slow the Frog method can help you figure this out.
When goals are prioritized, how should they be arranged?
The urgency and importance of each goal can help you determine what to do first.
The Eisenhower Matrix
Stephen Covey popularized this method in his best-selling book, The 7 habits of highly effective people.
It suggests that you rank each task by urgency and importance, where urgent tasks are those that need to happen quickly, and important tasks are those that will have the most impact on your goal.
When a task is identified as both urgent and important, that’s your “one thing,” and that’s the task to start with.
If another task is urgent but not important, delegate it. And if a task is important but not urgent, do it later. Finally, if something is not urgent or important, cross it off your list.
Read more about the Eisenhower Matrix here.
Do the most important and urgent thing first
“The One Thing” is a derivative of Eat the Frog, a productivity method based on Mark Twain’s quote:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s better to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s better to eat the biggest one first.”
You don’t have to be a frog legs fan to benefit from this. What Twain means is that your actions align with your priorities when you do the most important thing first.
Once you know your “one thing,” put everything else on hold until that one thing is done, then move on to the next urgent and important task.
Conclusion: Create your dream calendar
Prioritizing goals can help you create your dream calendar, so you can rest easy knowing you’re taking care of everything that’s important to you.
But as a busy business leader, it can be challenging to find enough time to prioritize your work and life goals.
Remember Mary from the beginning of this article?
She was completely overwhelmed by the number of competing tasks she had to keep track of, and it affected her mental well-being. But it wasn’t just that she had too much to do. Much of her overwhelm came from trying to figure out how to prioritize her goals on her own.
That all changed once she hired Prialto’s managed virtual assistant service.
Mary told us that her virtual assistant made her “dream calendar” between work and life a reality, and that she experienced a “critical personal change” in her mental well-being as a result.
Not only that, Mary’s virtual assistant also helps her stay accountable with an exercise on work priorities and boundaries. With the help of her virtual assistant, Mary can now go through life at a more comfortable pace, without worrying that she is neglecting something important.
Do you also want a virtual assistant who will create a dream calendar for you?
Then Set up a free discovery call today and get answers to all your questions about Prialto’s managed virtual assistant service.
*Names have been changed to ensure confidentiality.
