How To Guide - Super simple prioritising hacks.
- Jun 6
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 8
As the world gets ever more bonkers, and as micro business owners who are peddling hard to keep all the plates spinning and working, it's very difficult to work out if you're doing the right thing at the right time or prioritising effectively.
So many elements are pulling us in different directions, from marketing to finances, from delivery to making, from strategy to customer acquisition. Where to start so that you get stuff done but also don't end up being really busy treading water?
I want to share a super simple little hack that I use that was shared to me by a Leadership guru. Based on Covey's prioritising grid, it's a really great way to get out of your head and away from long lists to nowhere.
It's definitley ok to write lists and who doesn't love a little square to tick when you've done it, but are all those mini dopamine hits getting you to where you really want to be? Are you filling your days with the really useful stuff or just stuff.....?
Take a look at the following grid which you can download and print or simply create on a blank piece of paper for yourself. If you're just at the beginning of the week or are swamped by a list monster that's been chasing you for a while, spend a good 30 minutes downloading it all here. It will blow your mind how often you are hovering around the not really urgent or not really important stuff or muddling up what needs to be done today and what can be scheduled for next week.
Better still, you can also make this work so that you're attempting to do particular tasks at the right time - of the day, week or month! How often have you sat at the end of the day feeling tired and overwhelmed but posessed by the compulsion to 'get it done' when it might be an important but actually non urgent task that you could leave until you've had a sleep, for a morning or when you've got a great coffee in cafe?
Here's a little breakdown of the 'rules' of this prioritising grid, although it's so simple, very little explanation is needed!
DO - this is for the urgent and important tasks. The things that need to prioritisied for today or this week (depending on what you're sorting out). Really spend time assessing what it actually important and urgent too. For example, is it really urgent to reply to that email to a new client and rush it off now, or would it actually be better to schedule it in for tomorrow when you've thought clearly and carefully about your reply?
SCHEDULE - Important yes, but is it urgent? So many lists we make all end up in the DO box, making us feel overwhelmed and stressed, not to mention unproductive. Create grace in your working day or week and schedule important tasks to when you're most enagaged, less tired or with a sweet tea. I like colour blocking in my Google calendar for this by the way!
DELEGATE - this feels like a tricky box when many of us are working in a one or two person business. Someone has to do it right and there's no budget! But...it does help us either understand that we need to find time and budget to delegate because so much of the urgent but unimportant stuff can swamp a business away from real progress if we're not careful. Examples might be that someone emailed you and you feel under pressure to reply or you're compelled to check in on your socials because you've got all the notifications on your phone. One gamechanger for me is managing email. I have an auto reply that says that I only check email twice a day and if it's urgent, that people should call. Nobody calls. It gives me grace and although I don't delegate my emails to a PA, I do delegate it to a time when I'm ready to deal with them.
ELIMINATE - tricky if you're a task addict like me. But...it is an opportunity to figure out what is really really key in your business and what is flim flam. Are you over delivering to clients who actually don't really care or see value in the 'extra bits' you're doing? Are you still pondering for hours about what to write in your blog when you could use AI to give you some prompts? Could you automate elements of your customer journey so that you're not doing unnecessary tasks that a robot could? Fundamentally, will your business fall over if you stopped doing the thing?
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