Managing Time and Priorities — We own it!!!
By: Sachin Kodagali
Tags: Motivation, Getting Things Done, Prioritization, Pomodoro Technique, Time Management

Clock is moving faster, its 12pm and we have to complete check-in of a code by 2 pm, followed by helping your kid complete assignments by 3 pm, there is a bell ring and you need to pick a grocery delivery and need to stop cooker that’s whistling past count of 3??. Rewind 10 months back and we had only to complete check-in of a code by 2 pm. Time Management and Prioritization has become most essential skill everyone needs to learn and apply in 2020 and beyond.

I don’t have enough time to complete this

I have too many things to do, let me do this later

I planned this, but got something else to do

There is a lot of changes and I cannot incorporate all of them

Just think back how many times we would have thought of the above questions. Clear planning, actions and execution is what is needed, its all in our heads (mind)

Everyone is different, some people have a set template and they focus on certain things, are disciplined, finish things on time. Few of them can take things dynamically as it comes and few of them plan it and do things as required. Planning is the key to manage your priorities on time.

Prioritization

Priority by layman definition is, what work you need to complete, when.

Examples of priorities and their contradictions

We need to pay a bill as its a last day, very high priority → Why did we wait till the last day? I need to prepare for assignments next month before reading the topic for the assignment → Read first and then prepare for assignments Need to send a mail after the meeting → This can be done anytime after meeting, but is a key for ensuring action items are planned, assigned and executed, so this is immediate priority.

Priorities are dynamic in nature, some days highest priorities are overridden by the lower ones and on other days new ones come up. Everyone has their ways to manage priorities, we can track key priorities every day in a proper format, scribble it in a notepad or a One note. It is as important to prepare for exam as it is to write answers neatly, same goes with managing priorities regularly.

Time Management + Priority

Things become interesting now, we have 5 priorities (tasks to complete), 4 meetings and 8 hours??. An examples to drive home this point :

Lets take example of a teacher who is Working from home and need to manage her family needs :

Teacher has meetings (taking classes) 9–11, 2–4. Need to prepare food from 11–12 and complete checking assignment of 60 students and prepare for next day 4 hour classes and soon. Seems pretty squeezed right. Few things to ponder over :

9–11 and 2–4 are fixed, cant be changed. Need to be well prepared with the notes previous day, well not really, check point 4. 11–12 is fixed, but when does family needs to food to be dined, may be 1 or 1:30 so there is sometime here Checking assignment of 60 students, this does take time and is a floating, spread this across day and don’t keep it to the end of the day Next day preparation of classes again is a ongoing thing, no need to wait till previous day, perhaps take this activity whenever we have 2–3 hours time during week Answering students question or calls from fellow teachers in between are some priorities that cant be planned but needs to be done too.

There are many time management techniques that we can plan to use :

Pomodoro — Split your tasks into chunks of 25 minutes time slots. Helps students and even working professionals. Helps taking breaks on time and also doing focused work instead of concentrating on many things at the same time. Something I am willing to explore.

Kanban — Mostly used in project management, each team plans work by using sticky notes. This helps identify cross team dependencies and stick your dependencies and assign to other team.

Getting things done — Add a to-do list of what you need to accomplish, when. This is my go to technique, as you own your planning and keep updating priorities regularly and pat your back when you accomplish something.

Its essential to manage time and priorities in everyday life. All techniques are guiding factor but how we use them effectively and complete our work is upto us.