Prioritize!

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I used to play Zorro with my red pen. I’d make a good long to do list — which always gives me a sense of control — and I’d slash it up like this: “Aha! This will only take 10 minutes! [swoosh]. I can knock out these 2 right now! [swoosh, swoosh]. This one will make me look good to my boss! Can’t go wrong looking good! [swoosh].

I got a lot done — but how much of that really amounted to anything? Stressfully, very little. And how come I had to stay late to finish the big things? Have you heard of the 80/20 Rule? It implies that 80% of your to do list combined will give you only 20% of the results you want; that’s the bad news. The good is, 20% of the list will give you 80% of what you want.

I recommend you prioritize your to do list.

I now start with my top priority items first and bulldoze through my list. I break ranks only if I’m filling time, such as when waiting for a piece of information to be e-mailed to me.

In my Zorro days I thought it was efficient to blindly attack the list. Now I know it’s smarter to prioritize the list first. Try this little tip and you’ll be amazed at how effective you are.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 7:55 am and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Prioritize!

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