Tips for Prioritizing Tasks When Everything Feels Important

We understand how hectic school can be sometimes, especially when you have a ton of assignments due around the same time for different classes. By adopting a system of prioritization you can alleviate stress and anxiety. Here are a few IET approved tips for how to effectively prioritize. 

 

CREATE A LIST OF ALL OF YOUR TASKS

It’s important to create a single-view of all the tasks you have to get done. Take some time and make sure to jot down everything you have due. If you have huge tasks that require a lot of effort, note that it may be easier to break those into smaller sub tasks. 

IDENTIFY PRIORITIES AND ESTABLISH DEADLINES

There are many different methodologies that work for prioritizing deadlines. It really falls under personal preference. A couple of the most popular are… 

‘Bubble Sort’

Bubble sort helps by ranking tasks in order of priority. Bubble sort compares various requirements associated with each task and swaps them if they are in the wrong order.  For example, if you have 3 tasks: 1, 2 and 3. Take 1 and 2 and compare them. If 1 has a higher priority over 2, keep 1.  Next, compare 1 with 3. If 3 is more important than 1, keep 3. This approach is very useful when you need to figure out what task is extremely critical.  

Eisenhower Matrix

This method of prioritization was developed by former US president Dwight Eisenhower, and is quite simple. To get started, you will need to set up a matrix that is a four-quadrant box that will help you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones.

Break these different tasks up by: 

  • Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
  • Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
  • Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
  • Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible

USE A CALENDAR

Now that you have established priorities, it’s time to create a date-based plan to schedule all of your different tasks and deadlines. Start to think about the beginning and end of each task and plot those dates onto the calendar. If you are using a digital calendar, we highly recommend using the various alerts available to help you stay on track.

Do you have any tips for prioritization? We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us via our various social media channels with any tips you would like us to feature in our next article. 

 

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