A 5-Step Approach to Focus on Priorities at Work

I’m revisiting the important topic of priority management. In work life, we try to navigate a never-ending increase in the responsibilities and tasks to be accomplished in a given workday, week, month or year, with the realization that our personal capacity is often depleted and it’s costing us — physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. The lines of distinction between what’s truly important versus the tyranny of the urgent seem to be blurred. We often feel like we are in reaction mode as pressing problems and issues consume the workday and us.

Do we know, in fact, if the time expended on the daily or weekly activities is time expended on important things—priorities—or are those activities robbing us of essential time that could be expended on more important tasks?

The following 5-step approach provides a framework to allow you to evaluate how you are expending your time and whether that time is being focused on priorities essential to your organization and your role.

Step 1: Identify Values

An anchoring point for all of us in our work life (or personal life) is the mooring effect of values. What’s truly important in your organization? Take a moment to respond to this question: What does your organization value? Is it customer loyalty? Is it increased revenue or profitability? Is it the employees? What’s truly valued?

Here’s the connection between organizational values and your role: you were recruited and are retained because you offer something important that will help the organization realize its values. Your skills, knowledge, and abilities should help to drive and realize organization values. So, you need to know and support those values through your work.

If you cannot clearly identify your organization’s values, ask. Ask the business owner. Ask your manager or supervisor. We need to identify, understand, and demonstrate the values of the organization.

Step 2: Articulate Priorities

How do you demonstrate what’s valued at work? In part, you expend your time and energy on those priority responsibilities and tasks that support organizational values. If your organization values customer service, then what are you doing in your daily work that’s a priority that supports customer service?

Again, take some time to reflect on what you think the priorities are for your position or role. Here’s the challenge for many us: we cannot necessarily articulate with certainty our priorities. So, where do we begin? Use the following information to articulate your priorities.

• Start with your job description. Does your job description say something about your priorities? Check it out.

• In meetings with your manager, what’s been discussed that would suggest something about your priorities?

• Are you responsible for certain measurable outcomes for your role, team, department or functional area? What do the measurable outcomes suggest about your priorities?

• What about discussion points from your review or appraisal process for your role? Based on action items, goals, or other outcomes from your review, what do they suggest about your priorities?

Equipped with this information, create a list of priorities for your role.

Still not sure what your priorities should be? Ask. Again, ask your manager if it’s not clear. The bottom line is that you need to understand what the priorities are for your role so you can be focused on the right goals and expending your work time on what’s truly important.

Do we know, in fact, if the time expended on the daily or weekly activities is time expended on important things—priorities—or are those activities robbing us of essential time that could be expended on more important tasks? If you were to accurately record what expends your time in a typical work day, how many of the expenditures would align with what truly matters relative to priorities? What you may find is a small percentage of your tasks truly contributes to what’s important.

Step 3: Establish Goals

To position your goals for the greatest opportunity for success, you may want to establish goals with the following characteristics:

• Specific: be specific as you write your goals, including words that will help clearly define what you’re hoping to accomplish. Consider the following contrast in stated goals: A) Pursue additional leadership training versus B) Attend a leadership conference that will help me in further developing my abilities to effectively delegate important tasks to direct reports. I will attend the conference during the third quarter of this year.

• Motivating: how important is the goal? Why does it matter? How does it compel you toward action? These are important considerations when it comes to task or goal attainment.

• Measured: what gets measured gets done. How will you track your progress and know when it’s time to celebrate completion?

Step 4: Plan Based on Priorities

Once you’ve clarified your priorities for your role and goals to support those priorities, the next step is to plan accordingly to realize the goals. I appreciate the work of Stephen Covey in his book, “7 Habits of Highly Effectively People.” In the book, Covey (1990) discusses the significant difference between things that are urgent versus things that are important.

For most of us in today’s fast-paced work life, everything seems to be urgent. That is, we feel like we are reacting to pressing time lines, problems, issues, etc. But urgency does not necessarily equate to importance. Are the things that are vying for our time truly the important things (i.e., priorities)? Of course, we will always face problems, issues, etc., that demand our time right now. But what does our typical day look like? Is it consumed with the tyranny of the urgent or are we also taking time to focus on those things that are truly important.

For example, perhaps you consider face time with your employees important but pressing timelines and issues are precluding you from having the time available. That’s where priorities-based planning can make a difference.

Take time to plan your week and your day to allow you to focus on priorities. Practically speaking, that means use some sort of system that allows you to schedule the important things where you want to expend your time and energy.

If you want to spend more face time with employees, then, for example, put it on your weekly calendar. This assumes you use a calendaring system or some other system to maintain important tasks and/or appointments.

I suggest that you take some time at the end of your week to plan the week ahead by scheduling your priorities, and take time at the end of the previous workday or start of your workday to plan the day, again, focusing on scheduling your priorities.

Some may conclude that the nature of their work simply doesn’t allow them to plan their week or their day. You may seem to be in reactionary triage mode every day. My encouragement to you is to identify portions of your work day that can be scheduled and schedule the priorities that may otherwise be overlooked.

Step 5: Daily Actions to Support Priorities

Once you’ve established weekly and daily plans, daily follow through is essential. Using whatever planning system that works best for you, rely on your system to help guide you through your day. This allows you to direct your attention to the plan, even making daily course corrections as needed when the urgent issues arise.

Effective daily follow through also means you may have to practice “minute-by-minute” management to allow you to stay focused on priorities. There is one key consideration for effective minute-by-minute management: be aware of time traps.

Time traps are those habits we find ourselves pursuing that expend our time in less-than-efficient and/or effective ways. For example, you may have time scheduled (scheduling priorities) to focus on important paperwork relative to your area of responsibility but you find that every few minutes you’re interrupted by an employee or co-worker with the following initial phrase: “Do you have a minute?”

Of course, our initial and reactionary response is usually “Sure, what’s up?” What’s happened in this brief exchange is your focus has been distracted from the priority work you were doing to something that may be “urgent” but not necessarily important. The nature of our work may be frequently addressing the urgent so we have to discern carefully.

A simple strategy to avoid this time trap is to set clear expectations through effective communication with co-workers and direct reports when you need to protect your time to focus on priorities. Also, avoid the tendency to respond to questions like "Do you have a minute?” with “Sure.” Respond with a question like: “Can this wait?” or “Can I connect with you in 20 minutes? I need to stay focused on getting this report completed.” Do what’s necessary to maintain a productive balance between the urgent and the important and avoid time traps.