When you become a professional mom, the phrase “time is of the essence” is really close to your home. Between trying to manage my child’s school schedule and extracurricular activities, and dealing with my own work projects and deadlines, sometimes if we all walk out of the house wearing matching shoes, it feels like a miracle. Sometimes I call London Rio and my husband London and Rio Alex. Basically, trying to accomplish everything is impossible because the to-do list is growing faster than I can usually check. This is why, for my sanity and love for the order of De Silva’s living quarters, I began to fall in love with the art of prioritizing tasks.
It is very important to distinguish between what are really important activities and which activities are time-consuming and have almost no rewards. Time is indeed the most precious resource we have because we cannot get it back. Therefore, without further ado, here are some proven and authentic methods that can prioritize your tasks, protect your sanity, and often leave home wearing matching shoes.
Read next: How to beat overwhelming
How to determine the priority of tasks
Create task master list
The first thing you need to do is to write down all the unfinished tasks you need to complete, from arranging root canal treatment to responding to emails to helping your child complete her science project. Do a lot of brain dumps on a piece of paper so you can relieve yourself of the pressure to remember everything (because let’s face it: you won’t).
Mark your tasks mercilessly
Browse this main list to decide which tasks are urgent, which are important, and which are small tasks that can wait for a while. Really stingy with those emergency labels.
A good tool to help you solve this problem is famous Eisenhower Matrix, This is a simple chart, emergency and non-urgent on the top axis, and important and unimportant on the vertical axis. Urgent and important things, you do as soon as possible. Urgent and unimportant things, you entrust. Important but not urgent things, you plan later (such as next week you completed a big task). And everything else, you just remove from your life.
Another popular option is Brian Tracy’s ABCDE methodThe priority strategy involves marking each task. A stands for urgent or something you must do. B indicates that a task is very important and you should do it, but after your A person completes it. C is used for things that are easy to do but can be waited for. D stands for commission, and E stands for everything that can be really eliminated now. If you can, don’t be afraid to actually use that E and avoid tedious tasks.
After you have marked everything, review your urgent tasks and number them by importance. Now that you have indeed arranged your priorities in order, this will help you organize your life.
Start with the most difficult task
They say that most people are the most alert and efficient within the first three hours or so of waking up. Make the most urgent task the first thing you do every day. If you have a morning routine-by the way, I suggest you eat one! – Persevere and then start the first urgent task. Then it is completed, and your load will be lightened a little every day.
Stay focused
Bob Proctor has a cool saying, “We are only limited by poor attention span and poor imagination.” I have to say that I very much agree with this. All your manpower lies in your ability to squat down and focus on one thing at a time. Every time you are distracted or try to handle multiple tasks at the same time, you are cheating on your productivity. When you are a mom, multitasking becomes a must, but whenever possible, take care of one thing and always focus on it. Let’s make single task cool again.
Break things down
You have your list. You have determined your priorities. Now you are ready to get rid of those nasty responsibilities. However, just as Rome was not built in a day, you cannot complete all tasks in one afternoon. I personally like to give myself no more than 3, up to 4 tasks in a day, otherwise I will enter a state of being overwhelmed (read here how to beat it when it happens!). I also tend to work in a short period of time. This is like a concentrated burst of effort, during which no one is allowed to disturb mother. I call these my “power time” (Read about them here) And I found that they really help me work quickly and efficiently compared to a situation where there is no time limit. Challenge yourself to work faster in shorter time intervals, and then take a break when needed.
Delegate what you can do
If you have the ability and resources to delegate some of your work, you must do so. I find it worthwhile to spend a little extra money to free up a lot of time. You can completely change your schedule by hiring a virtual assistant, project manager, or getting some help with cleaning, childcare, or grocery shopping. These days, everything is served.Think about those Tedious task This will bring you the most pressure and consider outsourcing them. This may be well worth your money.
Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you work, tasks are always piled up and you can’t get rid of them. But taking the time to write everything down, become realistic, and prioritize will ultimately save you a lot of time. If you have a long list, don’t be too harsh on yourself. Everyone does it! We all just do our best, our hard work is enough. Stay strong and stay busy.
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