Can’t Prioritize? 3 Tips to Prioritize Your Day.

Dear Friends,

The #2 biggest problem our users tell us about is they don’t know how to prioritize their days.

Here’s 3 easy steps to prioritize everything you need to do and take back control of your life. The best part? It takes less than 10 minutes every day.

Step 1. Plan your day in the AM (10 minutes starts)

Every morning at 9 am, I plan my day. I sit for 10 minutes and list out everything that ‘needs’ to get done. Of course, I use Today on Berlocks, but a notebook or app works too. I’ve used Moleskine for years. Their Actions app (a ToDo list) is pretty awesome too. I also look at my calendar and see all my meetings for the day.

Here’s all my tasks for Today:

Step 2: Prioritize your Baby (5 min remaining)

Quick story time: Mom and baby finished shopping at Trader Joes and are walking back to their car. Mom trips and starts to fall. Which should she drop — the groceries or her baby?

Most of us would answer — drop the groceries, save the baby! It’s easy to answer because clearly the baby is the priority.

The same is true for everything we ‘need’ to do. In life it’s harder because we don’t know which tasks are the groceries and which is the baby. We end up thinking everything is the baby and we try to save it all. But this never works.

Fact: Almost everything are groceries, there’s only one baby.

So how do you know which tasks are the groceries and which is the baby?

For each task on your list, ask ‘Will this help me hit my Week’s goal?’ (If you’re not a Berlocks user, ask ‘Will this help me hit my goal?’)

Here’s my Week’s goal:

If you answered No, then its groceries, and therefore it’s not the most important thing for you to do. If you answered Yes, then that task is closer to be your baby.

Do this until you’ve reduced all Yes down to a small list. But again, there’s only one baby. From your smaller list, pick the one task you absolutely need to do Today to move towards your week’s goal.

Set that goal as your Today’s goal. That’s your baby!

My baby is Close Max @ 9 am. It’s the one task I must do today to hit my week’s goal of Get 1+ users.

Step 3: Time block several hours for your baby (1 min remaining)

Congrats, now you have your baby. Next, just block out a few hours to compete your baby. I recommend a solid 3–4 hours. During this time focus and complete your baby. Block off things like other work, meetings, emails, and social. You know that they’re just groceries so drop them. Remember: drop the groceries, save the baby.

Final thoughts:

It’s actually pretty easy to prioritize your day — when you know what your baby is. And don’t feel bad for all the groceries. As long as you complete your baby, you can do the groceries later. But do first things first.

When you have many things to do, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. But the solution is simple.

1. Write out all your tasks in the AM.
2. Prioritize one task as your baby.
3. Block out time to complete your baby.