This content has been developed in association with the Institute of Organisational Psychology.
Video
How prioritising helps you succeed Te āhua o tā te whakaarotau āwhina i a koe kia angitu
Having too much to do is a common problem. The secret is to use the time that you have well. Psychologist Jonathan Black explains what prioritisation is and how it helps.
Transcript
Video transcript for How prioritising helps you succeed
[Audio/Visual: As the screen opens, quiet music plays in the background. The music plays throughout the video. The screen opens displaying the title “How prioritising helps you succeed”. Beneath the title is sub-title text: a by-line “Good business looking after you” and the Spark Business Lab and business.govt.nz logos.]
[Visual: Screen changes to show the presenter in the centre of screen. On the bottom left of the screen, in white text on a blue background, is the speaker’s name: Jonathan Black. On the bottom right of the screen in white text is the by-line “Good business looking after you”, the Spark Business Lab logo and business.govt.nz logo. The by-line and logos remain in place for the entire video.]
[Audio: The presenter, Jonathan Black begins to speak.]
Let’s talk about prioritising and managing time. You won’t get more time, so you need to work out what to do with the time you have. That’s where prioritisation comes in.
Not prioritising the right way for you can mean you get side-tracked, and later realise you should have spent your time on other things.
At its most basic, prioritising is about working out what to do first. It’s about planning and organising information. It gives your day structure and clarity when you most need it, and helps you take control.
Prioritisation has several benefits. These are the first three: You’re less anxious, which means you think better, make better decisions and are more positive. You get started with tasks and actually finish them. You feel in control of your business, rather than your business being in control of you.
But dig a bit deeper, and you’ll see that prioritising includes understanding why you’re doing things and what’s important to your business. Let’s say you stayed up till midnight to get your invoices out, so you know that money’s coming in and you can sleep. You did that because cash flow, of course, is important.
But today you’re irritable and your kids are grumpy with you because you didn’t read them a bedtime story. When these things happen a few more times, you realise your sleep and your kids are important. You start thinking about how you invoice and whether to invest in software to make invoicing easier.
That’s the fourth benefit of prioritising: You learn what’s really important and prioritise those things. You see the point of a task or action.
An important part of prioritising is reviewing what you actually got done. Maybe you planned to do your invoicing last week but you got side-tracked. When you realised you hadn’t sent your invoices, you panicked. You were busy all week, but where did your time go?
That brings us to the fifth benefit: you learn where your time goes, how much you’re keeping to plan, and if your plan needs tweaking.
Ask yourself if what you did was really important. Would it have made a critical difference if you hadn’t done something, or had done it next week instead?
Review doesn’t have to take long or involve detailed notes. Take a few moments to look at your emails or diary to remind yourself of what you actually did. When you see patterns in how you’ve spent time, you can better decide what to do in future. Just be honest with yourself.
And finally, prioritising includes communicating. Simply ignoring something or hoping for the best isn’t a good idea if someone needs something from you. Tell them as soon as you know that you can’t deliver on time, so they can change their plans. Don’t just hope that you can finish everything, only to tell someone at the last minute that you’ll be late, or not tell them at all.
That’s another benefit: you limit possible damage if you can’t finish everything.
To summarise, prioritising is about working out what to do first. It’s also about working out what’s important, reviewing and communicating. When you prioritise: you’re less anxious, you start and finish tasks, you feel in control, you identify what’s important, you learn where your time goes, and you can manage the possible risk.
But what if you’re too busy or overwhelmed to prioritise? We’ll discuss that in our next video, “How to take control when you're overwhelmed”.
[Visual: Display changes to closing screen, displaying the Spark Business Lab logo and business.govt.nz logo on the bottom right.]