Learning How to Prioritize

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Learning How to Prioritize

By: David Korn

Prioritizing is probably the single most important way to manage your time. The key to prioritizing is to know what is unimportant, important, or urgent. These skills take time to develop and I will show you a chart that can assist you in determining these factors.

In this chart, I designed a simple 2 by 2 grid with the different levels of importance. Many people may find it difficult to decide which task fits in a category. I will give some examples of each category ranging from unimportant to urgent. Of course, opinions will differ on what is considered important or not. Therefore, you can use my examples as a guide to decide on what matters to you most.

Unimportant	Somewhat Important (Low Priority)
Important	Urgent (High Priority)

Unimportant: sitting around and doing nothing, watching television for entertainment, lying around in bed, and so on. Summation: being unproductive.

Somewhat Important: household chores, organizing your rooms, calling or seeing friends, reading, and so on. Summation: personal development items.

Important: school work, job work, bank and debt activities, food and water, shelter, and so on. Summation: necessary survival and life activities.

Urgent: medical emergencies, family emergencies, safety threat emergencies, work crises, and so on. Summation: activities that need your immediate attention.

The main idea behind this chart is to focus more on the urgent and important activities. After those are completed, you can focus on the less important activities and unimportant ones for relaxation. You may also use this chart as a printout, and fill in some examples in each category. Adopting these habits will prove invaluable in managing your time.