Priority!

Amos Rebecca Buba

One of the commonest challenge we all face is knowing how to prioritize. Our society today is full of activities to carry out, non-stop work, and higher expectations, this makes it very difficult to decide what really deserves our attention and that can quickly become overwhelming.

The whole idea of doing so many things within a specific period of time is tiring especially if the activities been carried out are not the most important on the list; that is where prioritizing comes in.

You may have probably used the word countless times and even refer to someone or something as your priority, but have you ever wondered if your priority is actually important or just urgent?

Let’s have a clearer meaning of these terms: Priority, Important and Urgent

Priority is something that is more important than other things and needs to be done or dealt with first, here we can see the word Important.

Important means something of great value or worth.

While urgent means something that requires immediate attention.

Most of the time, we assume urgent tasks to be important and place them top of our list. An urgent task is bind with the need of immediate action such as submitting a paper work even though it might not be the most important on the list.

How to know what is really important

Whenever you have more than three tasks to carry out within a period of time, weigh them on the scale of importance, check the value they are producing, the short term and long term impact of doing them, the result of not doing them, know what tasks need to be done and if you have all it takes to carry out the task at the moment.

Once you know how to prioritize your tasks and your time, you realize that much of the work that felt urgent doesn’t really need your attention. At least not right away.

Even though mastering prioritization can change your life, reduces stress, helps you focus, improve productivity and time management, and aid with striking a work-life balance, when priorities are piling up, you need clarity to prevent one from been overwhelmed with things on your list.

From today onward, before you rush to any task weigh it on the scale of importance, urgency shouldn’t be the only reason why an item is top of your list.

Learn to prioritize, it saves a lot!