We’ve all been there: tasks piling up, +100 unread emails, fires to put out, deadlines coming up and you don’t know where to start.
No need to panic, our CINO, Carlos Molina, has come up with a series of tips and strategies so you can learn how to prioritize your tasks, become more efficient, and prevent ending up buried in a pile of unanswered emails and unsolved emergencies – or clean everything up and give the year a fresh start.
“The idea is to develop a strategy that will work even if you upscale your business or grow your team. Ultimately, it’s actually about how well you can manage your tasks. So, I believe, that the highest priority you’ll ever have is getting rid of and managing tasks. If you can’t organize yourself to reduce your daily amount of tasks and prioritize them as they come in, you’re doing something wrong”, he began, highlighting, however, that there’s no “right” way to do it. According to him, his method is one in a million, but it has proven to work for him throughout the years.
We’ve compiled his strategies to give you 5 tips on how to do it. Check it out!
1. Prioritize tasks
The fewer tasks you have, the easier it is to organize yourself. “Many times, when we’re prioritizing our work, we find that we have tasks that aren’t urgent or important but take us five minutes to finish, so we should go for those first because having fewer tasks helps us to be more efficient”, he explained.
The risk of leaving quick tasks for last is that they accumulate. And what wasn’t a problem in the first place suddenly becomes one.
2. Every task must have a deadline
“Projects without deadlines get lost”, argued Molina. He said that even if there are no “official” deadlines, one must set them for oneself, realistically, as a self-commitment to get things done. If you can’t reach the due date you set, when it comes he recommends reassessing and setting a new due date.
Also, “do not leave unfinished tasks”. If that’s the case, again, set a new deadline, “because experience has taught me that, at the end of the day, if you don’t do that, you’ll just leave that task unfinished, in limbo, and once you do it for the first time, you’ll start leaving many things unfinished”, he warned.
3. Avoid accumulating notifications
If you have 600 unread emails/messages/etc you won’t be able to identify emergencies if they come up. “Whenever I have a new notification I automatically check what it’s about to decide how I’ll organize it: if I should mark it for later, answer it, or turn it into a task…”, said Molina.
He reiterated that he always tries to go home at the end of the day without having any pending notifications. That doesn’t mean that necessarily all tasks were completed, it’s just a way to avoid getting blind-sided by any last-minute obligation.
4. Write everything down
“If something isn’t important, you can later throw it away, that’s fine. But you need to have it written down to assess whether it’s important or not”, emphasized Molina. However, he adverted, try keeping your notes in the same place: have one notebook, not 8, for example. It’s crucial to be able to find the information you’re looking for.
Although Molina mentioned taking notes in a notebook, he pondered that any tool works, including your phone’s notepad. But, whichever tool you choose, be it to write things down or even organize your priorities, “it’s important to be strict in its use”. If you create an organizational system for yourself, stick to it.
5. Set aside time to finish tasks & schedule new ones
“In my weekly calendar I always set aside an hour or two where I try not to have any meetings, so I can finish whatever tasks I can and organize my calendar for new ones. Sometimes I even work a couple of hours on Sundays so I can arrive at the office on Monday and know what I have to do. Of course, sometimes all of that plan goes south pretty quickly, but I try to have one”, he concluded.
So let’s recap all the steps:
- Prioritize tasks
- Every task must have a deadline
- Avoid accumulating notifications
- Write everything down
- Set aside time to finish tasks & schedule new ones
Alright, now it’s time to put the tips into practice!
