8 – Errors that Prevent you from Prioritizing your tasks

Errors that Prevent you from Prioritizing your tasks:- Do you have the feeling of wasting time on small, insignificant tasks? Want to increase your productivity? It’s time to react and better manage your priorities! Prioritizing the tasks of a project means defining which task is the most important at this particular moment. The goal is to avoid wasting time, but also money by accomplishing minor tasks whose realization has no real impact on the progress of your project and which can therefore wait.

Errors that prevent you from prioritizing your tasks

Here are the 8 common mistakes that prevent you from prioritizing your tasks.

1. You do not have a defined task list

This common mistake is so simple to avoid. For each project, one of the first steps is to precisely define the list of the different tasks to be carried out. This step is essential in order to follow the evolution of the project and to know the workload that you and your team must support. It is by knowing the entire tasks of your project that you can determine which ones must imperatively be carried out first, and which ones can wait. Then you can estimate the time required to complete the various tasks, anticipate delays and save valuable time on your project. Do not hesitate to divide important tasks into sub-tasks in order to be as specific as possible.

2. You do not Spend or Little time Prioritizing

You think prioritizing your tasks is a waste of time. You are wrong. The prioritization of tasks must be considered as a task in its own right. That is, you must devote as much time as you would to any other task in your project.

In fact, prioritizing your tasks should be your priority. Take 15 minutes each morning to evaluate and schedule your tasks for the day, or organize a weekly meeting with your team to set goals and priorities for the week.

Far from being a waste of time, prioritizing your tasks will make you more efficient and productive, and will save you time.

3. You Lose Sight of the Final goal of the Project

Never lose sight of the purpose of your project. In project management, it is easy to disperse and work on lesser tasks. You and your team must remain focused on achieving the ultimate goal. Your attention should therefore be focused on the tasks and decisions that drive your project in this direction. The other tasks, identified as minor, can wait; the unnecessary ones can be deleted.

4. You do not Delegate

You prefer to do things yourself. Thus, you are certain that they are done correctly, according to your standards. The problem: you overload yourself with work and you end up doing small tasks that prevent you from managing your true priorities. Why do you get bogged down in missions that can easily be carried out by your collaborators? Keep your tasks under control and show your employees that you trust them by assigning them work.

5. You can not Differentiate the Urgent from the Important

You tend to move from one task to another without any consistency. Urgent, important, what’s the difference? Is this the task that your manager asks you to perform? The one that makes money to the company or the one that advances your project?

In project management, it is imperative to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. As Dwight David Eisenhower said, 34 the President of the United States: ” What is important is seldom urgent and what is rarely significant urgent.” Become productive with the Eisenhower Matrix and learn to prioritize your tasks.

Remember that the importance of a task is defined by its impact on achieving your goals and the added value it brings to your project, whereas the urgency of a task is based on its date of completion, and the time needed to complete it.

6. You do not know the Extent or Deadline of Each task

It is difficult to prioritize your tasks if you have no idea of ​​the deadlines and scope of each task, Hence the importance of having a complete vision of your project. To do this, use the Gantt diagram , an indispensable planning tool that allows you to view the progress of your project. Using this tool, you know the start and end dates of each task, the duration of the task, and whether or not it is dependent on other tasks. Prioritizing your tasks then becomes easier.

7. You get Distracted by Small things without Importance

Like every morning, you are ready to attack your to-do list, but you are caught between urgent emails, the phone that keeps ringing, and repeated questions from your collaborators. You then decide to take a break while surfing the Internet. So, you’ve just lost precious time to being totally counterproductive. You were not able to progress on your project because you were too busy on unnecessary tasks that replaced your priorities.

Isolate yourself, cut the Internet, unplug the phone and focus on your priorities at least a few hours a day. Follow our tips to improve your productivity in just 6 days .

8. You tend to Procrastinate

Admit it, you have the unfortunate tendency to postpone everything overnight with “I do not have time” or “I will do it later”. Procrastination is a real scourge that plagues your productivity and prevents you from being successful in your projects. Follow our tips to stop procrastinating , effectively manage your priorities and lead your project towards success.

In Summary

Prioritizing the tasks of your project is essential to better manage your time. To achieve your goals and drive your project towards success, it is imperative to focus on your priorities.