Time Management Problems With Prioritizing By Importance

Does your time get trapped by following these 3 old-fashioned time management techniques?

Stop trying to prioritize by importance. That's a major piece of advice from someone obsessed with time management.

Prioritizing by importance has been a common sense time management technique taught for years. So telling you that it is a bad technique might raise some red flags. That's ok. I know I'm right. And you will discover your own solution by understanding this article.

Naturally, the 'time flies' phenomenon is great if you're in 'the zone' of productivity and life satisfaction. But how do you juggle all the deadlines, resources, and other people to find the balance?

And that's just at work!... But a Time Management System in today's fast economy must include both your work life as well as your personal life (leisure, hobbies, social relations, chores, etc).

How can you get your hair cut, mow the lawn, take the dog to the vet, fill in those blasted document forms, make dinner, AND drop Sally off at her tutor?! Weekends seem to be used more and more just for catching up on life's basic necessities. Clearly, developing your time management skill is more than just a good idea.

So let's begin with a question: Have you prioritized a list of things to do by level of importance recently? It works doesn't it. In a messy kind of way. Not quite 'plain sailing' though... It's ok if you don't have much to do, but then you wouldn't be bothered about a time management system in the first place if you didn't have quite a few things to juggle. So you've probably noticed, just writing down a list and prioritizing by importance or urgency doesn't work as well as you'd like. Do you have to neglect certain areas of life because other things are 'more important'? Should you list priorities by 1 to 10 and just focus on number 1 until it's done and then move on to number 2?

You would never get round to things like cutting the grass, exercising regularly, filing papers, reading your kids night time stories.

You could try combining importance with urgency. On Saturday afternoon you want to take your daughter to her tutor, get your hair cut, read through the office paperwork you've brought home with you because there wasn't enough time at work last week. Now, you realize it will be hard to fit all those things in. So you decide to not get your hair cut again this weekend. Until your wife nags at you for having long scruffy hair it's not urgent is it.

How do you really prioritize between reading a memo and taking Sally to her tutor and getting your hair cut? Should you try to prioritize by urgency?

That office memo is majorly important. But the tuition appointment is urgent because it starts in an hour. So the office memo has Priority Importance level A. But your daughters tuition has importance B but urgency A.

Finally, when your wife pokes fun at your overgrown hair, you'll finally adjust it from the priority list C to the priority list A. But you need to take the wife shopping today so that's an A too.

Along comes Saturday afternoon, and Sally's tutorship now gets crossed off the B list and put on the A list because it's Saturday, and you've got Memo and Sally's Tutorship on the A list.

The ABCDE method of prioritizing by importance creates a lot of difficulty. Even with just those handful of tasks to account for. When life is far more varied and complex. And you know the mess experienced with time management when everything is put into the mix. Trying to prioritize by importance and urgency is, as I hope you'll agree, next to impossible, and highly impractical.

Modern time management needs something far better than the old fashioned method of prioritizing. Such a limiting time management technique creates big problems.

Searching for modern solutions to time management prioritizing is worth your time. Because your time is the most precious commodity you have. So abandon the traditional time management techniques and develop your own natural time management skill by striking out on new paths. Make your own choices. Discover what works for you.