Must Should Could an Effective Way to Prioritize Your Day.
Talk about a rusty wheel;
I have not been doing much online stuff from a laptop or desktop for the last couple of months. Mobile phones, while brilliant, can make things harder. Perseverance can bring some excellent rewards, using the voice-to-text app on the phone being one such thing. Taking that time has been awesome, and there are some fantastic projects underway. Rapidly turning into a mobile freak, lookout online world lol.
I am not sure why, but it is hard to get back into the swing of things; to get the work done, we all need to be prioritizing effectively. It can be one of the most important keys to our success. Nothing beats that feeling we get from working on things in a timely fashion. It certainly helps with the focus and engagement. From observation, it is a continuous activity, hence the rusty wheel feeling.
It can be about taking some things on while letting other things go, and as the day goes, making those time trade-offs to make things flow. Most days, there can be more tasks in the jar than hours in the day to achieve the desired outcomes effectively. If we don't plan the tasks for each day, the time has that habit of running away on us without much to show.
Back to priority Bootcamp for me;
The best thing that works for me is establishing the minimum results that I will be happy to achieve. The best way to do that is to sort out what must be done, then what should be done, and finally, what could be done. Asking these simple questions can be a quick way to get a handle on the day ahead.
MUST, SHOULD, COULD
- What MUST I do today?
- What SHOULD I do today?
- What COULD I do today?
Great for focus. Thinking about what must be done until you get into the swing of things can be a great way to go, and not taking onto too many musts a day is a must. Three seems to work for me, and once we get into achieving our musts, it can be so motivating and help build some momentum, and three musts a day that's 21 must's a week. When the momentum builds, it can be easier to bite off more.
The same with shoulds chose three and work away at achieving them throughout the day. I find that approaching it that way allows to keep them in sight and just chip away. Get onto the could do's if everything goes according to plan. I tend to get derailed when too many should do's and could do's get put in the mix—the best way to get nothing done from experience.
Doing the hard stuff first up is a great way to roll, and as luck would have it, that is usually the must-dos, so a win-win.
It starts with identifying the minimum that you are prepared to accept, and if we can be mindful of that, then we are way more focused. As the day is progressing, you know that you are hitting your targets. I find that sense of achievement is hard to beat. On the flip side, the key can be not to beat yourself up if things go to custard; incredibly essential.
Once we sort out the daily priority routine, time to move to that weekly priority schedule and all the benefits that it brings. Once again just a matter of going through that questioning process.
- What MUST I do this week?
- What SHOULD I do this week?
- What COULD I do this week?
There is a picture building, and it is one that works.
From memory, it can be a bit of a grind sometimes; time to change the self-talk. Instead of the must do's, change it up too;
"What I choose to do."
It may seem a simple change, yet focusing on things this way can be empowering enough to give that lift and keep you on track.
That can be incredibly important when you are working online. Much of the online journey can be a solitary experience, so anything that can create a rhythm and routine can only bring benefits. For me, today was no exception; that feeling we get when we have been productive can be hard to beat; it definitely gets us fired up to come back tomorrow and rinse and repeat.
How do you prioritize your day? I would be really keen to hear from you.
Alex Evans
Recent Comments
18
Thanks Alex,
A great reminder to plan one's day - week - month.
Must - Should - Could
"How do you prioritize your day?"
I often get distracted & a flitter from one thing to another.
So much time is wasted on unnecessary distractions.
Back to the planning board for me.
Denis
Hi Denis, I think half the battle can be in recognizing that we are flitting from one thing to another. Doing something about it can be a work in progress.
Well worth the effort to get it sorted.
Best wishes.
Alex
A week of crazy Texas weather has wiped out my "good" habits and replaced them with the kind you have when your house is not warm, your water is frozen. Then when you get power, it blows the return air fan for the heater. The cell phones have been out for over a week. No way to call local repair people. Most of them have no phone service either;
Emailing my daughter with requests for their help with repair request from another state! It worked for the plumber. Hopefully the heater repair as well.
I think a nap with an extra blanket may be in order.
The sun is shining and we will soon belong to the world of order again. I will remember this week and move on to a more productive one. I will need your reminder to get my self in order and get busy,
Thanks for a chance to vent. Sami
You vent away Sami, the seasons are getting harsher and more extreme.
That feeling of helplessness can take its toll. We like to think we are in control, nature has a habit of letting us know how fragile our tenure is.
Take care Sami, the sun and warmth will return.
Alex
Your post is a great reminder that we need to really structure our day in someway. I tend to structure my day with tasks. I do certain things in the morning like correspondence, then research, then writing etc. Within those blocks there are things that I prioritize. I do the oldest thing first and work my way through stuff. I don’t know if that’s great but that’s what I’ve always done.
What a great way to do things Jim, any system we evolve to organize the tasks in each day is good, especially if it works for us.
Particularly like the idea of doing the oldest stuff first.
Thank you for sharing, much appreciated.
Alex
Ha ha, Alex! Excellent post, my friend! How do I prioritize my day? Well, I am a firefighter, putting out the largest fire that confronts me each day first!
Jeff
That is flipping awesome,Jeff, tackling the hardest first is a great way to prioritise the day.
I have this vision of you and your blogging crew screaming around singing out
Let's do this.
You made my day Jeff.
Alex
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Excellent advice, Alex.
What a great way to prioritize our priorities!
We're often told that every day should start with a written 'To Do' list, and to write the list in order of priority - the Musts, Shoulds and Coulds - but what we're not told is how many of each.
Accepted wisdom seems to be to cross off all of your Musts before going onto the Shoulds and then onto the Coulds.
This, from my own personal experience, leads to overwhelm and panic at perceived urgency. In the end, little or even nothing can get done.
3 of each is the way I'll be doing this from now on.
Excellent advice as always, Alex.
Thanks for sharing and keep it coming.
Cheers
Rich :-)