Prioritize with the Pareto Principle

Do you live in a world in which your priorities are changing every hour?

Your boss tells you to drop everything - but you know they are going to come back and ask what happened with the project you were told to drop!

On top of this there is information overload, hundreds of emails, mergers and acquisitions.

This paints a picture of a constantly changing landscape!

It is important to navigate your way in this changing landscape .

To do this you must have a priority system which validates incoming tasks against your obligations.

In my experience there is no one "best" way! But you can build your priority system on three things:

1. Know what your key result areas or goals are
2. Use the Pareto principle or other techniques to prioritize your tasks
3. Write down a plan or time management schedule to ensure that you get your high impact activities done.

By having these time management tools you put into place a priority system that ensures you get the most important things done.

Know and respect the Pareto principle

Named after an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, the Pareto principle or the 80 20 principle means that irrespective of what you choose, 20% are vital and 80% are trivial.

For example, look at your to do list - if you have 10 tasks on there then two of those tasks will yield 80% of your results.

Alternatively, 80% of income is owned by 20% of people - it works both ways!

The Pareto principle holds across business, academia, politics, and a number of other areas.

The foundation of this time management skill is that:

20% of tasks yield 80% of results.

Graphically, the Pareto principle looks like this:

So your top priorities are those that enable you to achieve 80% of results.

By concentrating on your top priorities you boost your time management skills and get important things done.

But how do you know what your top priorities are?

Your top priorities are those that are aligned with your performance criteria, key result areas, or goals.

Your goals and objectives

Do you have performance criteria that you need to meet for your job? What are your job specifications?

Do you have key result areas?

While setting personal goals or doing career goal setting may make you feel uneasy - especially after January's resolutions had thawed by February - setting goals is critical to determine your priorities!

Priority tasks are those that move you toward your goals, key result areas or objectives. These tasks enable you to achieve your goals and objectives.

Executives build a solid reputation by having a vision and clarifying the steps to get there. They articulate specific objectives that are measurable and time bound. There objective and goals reflect SMART goals.

SMART goals give you the greatest chance of goal setting success and achieving your objectives.

SMART goals and objectives enable you to filter incoming tasks based on your priority system.

In today's world of information overload and real-time response, it is not unusual to be faced with a dozen tasks that demand your attention.

The pareto principle is one of a few ways to prioritize your work.

Other methods of prioritizing other than the pareto principle include:

1. The four quadrants. Stephen Covey's method groups tasks into one of four quadrants.

   It is argued that effective people spend most of their time in quadrant 2.

   I talk more about this at the time management matrix.

2. The ABC method of prioritization. This divides tasks in terms of priority. A tasks are high priority tasks, while B tasks are of secondary priority, and C tasks are of the least priority.

   The ABC categories are discussed when constructing a to do list.

3. Payoff versus Time. Each task is weighted in terms of payoff and time.

   The more payoff and the less time to complete, the higher the priority of the task. If you use this method you first do tasks that have the highest payoff for the least time.

Plan your work and work your plan

List all the activities that you have to do over the next week.

Now put an A, B or C next to them.

'A' is for your most important activities (those top 20%), 'B' are somewhat important (60%), and 'C' are your least important activities (bottom 20%).

Look at all of your top priority items.

Now put them into your time management planner or personal organizer and schedule a time for them.

Time management tip: Block your time based on organizational and personal factors.

It is not always best to do your top priorities first!

This is for two reasons:

1. Your prime time may not be early in the morning.

   Most people tend to work better in the morning (fowls) while others work better at night (owls).

   Try to block time for important activities around when you are most productive and alert.

   I talk more about this in personal time management.

2. When you arrive at work there may be customers demands, people lining up to be served, etc.

   While you may be able to manage emails with email etiquette, it is harder manage a customer or supplier knocking on your door.

   Blocking your time for important tasks needs to take into account the personal and the environmental factors that you may face.

By having a prioritizing process and an effective way to schedule your time to get important things done, you develop a time management system that assures increased effectiveness and better use of your time.

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