📋 How to Prioritize Tasks When You Have Too Much to Do 📌

When you're drowning in a sea of ​​tasks and obligations, even deciding what to do first can be difficult. In such a situation, it's important to accept that it's simply physically impossible to do everything and to prioritize the most important things. Otherwise, stress and guilt will haunt you.

What should be a priority

The specific tasks will be different for everyone, but there are a few areas of life that we all need to pay more attention to. They are the ones that help us move toward long-term goals and make life worth living. However, many people ignore them for months or even years. Try to move them to the top of your to-do list.

1 Health

While each person will have their own specific goals, there are a few areas of life that we should all pay more attention to. They are the ones that help us move toward our long-term goals and make life worthwhile. Yet many people ignore them for months or even years. Try to move them to the top of your to-do list. The results of such decisions accumulate and begin to affect all areas of your life. Fast food does not give you enough energy to work well. Stress and irritability, which arise from the fact that we do not take care of ourselves, make us take it out on our loved ones. As a result, not only does our physical well-being suffer, but also our mental well-being, and our emotional state deteriorates. So remind yourself: health is the foundation of everything.

2 Sleep

Preparing for exams, finishing a report, staying up late watching a TV series — we choose anything but sleep. It seems that by cutting it down, we will gain a few extra hours for our own affairs. But the price for this is very high. You have probably felt the effects of lack of sleep: fatigue, irritability, inability to concentrate and do anything productively. But, according to research, a constant lack of rest leads to much more serious problems: from cardiovascular diseases to deterioration of brain function. Do not neglect sleep.

3 Relationships with loved ones

In times of stress, we often let go of relationships with loved ones, thinking that they will not go anywhere and we will simply return to communication when we have more time. And so we miss a child’s concert because of a work meeting or forget to congratulate a friend on his birthday because our thoughts are preoccupied with work. Such trifles accumulate and spoil relationships, and then they are difficult to restore. Allocate time to strengthen family and friendly ties so that you do not have to regret what you missed. Here are some tips to help you with this: Make the first move. Don’t wait for others to suggest something. Be the one who maintains contact and invites family and friends somewhere. Decide for yourself what you will not miss for the world.  At some point, you will inevitably have to make a choice in favor of work or other responsibilities. But there should also be situations that cannot be neglected, for example, a wedding anniversary or helping a friend in a difficult time. Keep in touch.  We are all busy, but this is no reason to lose contact. Call, write, congratulate your loved ones on their victories, express sympathy for failures, thank them and get in touch just like that.

4 Productive work

Working hard and working productively are not necessarily the same thing. You can work from morning till night and still get minimal results. That’s why it’s important to work not just hard, but smart: work deeply, focus on tasks that help you grow, including professionally. Look for and prioritize opportunities that will allow you to learn new things and do what inspires you.

What should be excluded from priorities

To move something up your to-do list, you have to give up something else. Here are some activities that you can eliminate to free up your time and energy.

1 Social media and acquisitions content absorption

Checking what’s new on Instagram or Twitter shouldn’t be your priority. Here’s what Digital Minimalism author Cal Newport advises: “Focus on a small number of carefully selected online activities that support your values, and feel free to skip the rest.” To make this process easier: Track where you spend your time. There are special services for this. Once you see how much you waste, it will be easier to redirect that time to something else. Make it harder for yourself to access. Delete social media apps so you don’t go to them out of boredom.

2 Tasks with small value tasks

There are always things that take up a lot of time but don’t move us forward:

• check your email and reply to messages;
• read accumulated messages in work chats;
• do repetitive administrative tasks;
• fulfill someone's urgent request.

Such routine only distracts from the main thing. Remind yourself that you will not achieve big goals if you constantly only deal with such trifles.

3 Negative attitude

We often dwell on unpleasant events and failures, doubt ourselves, or get angry at others. This not only ruins our mood, but also takes up time that could be spent on changes in our lives. Use the following strategies to avoid getting stuck in negative thoughts: Collect a collection of compliments. When you are told something nice, praised, thanked, or complimented, write it down in a notebook or save a screenshot. When you are in a bad mood, rereading kind words will help you feel better. Monitor your When you notice negative thoughts about yourself, imagine that you are saying something similar to a close friend or child. Most likely, you will see that you are too critical of yourself. Be kinder. Remember that people may have hurt you because they themselves were going through difficulties. But do not forget about being kind to yourself. If you feel that a person is toxic, protect your boundaries or stop communicating.

How to Put What's Important First

1 Combine all tasks

You probably have a list of work tasks and personal matters, and various ideas are constantly spinning in your head. So it’s very difficult to figure out what to do first. So the first step is to collect all the tasks in one place and mark the deadlines by which they should be completed. For this, you can use paper or services like Trello and Todoist.

2 Eliminate distractions

Block access to sites that take up a lot of your time. You can do this for the entire day or for a certain period when you need to work without distractions. If this is not an option for you, at least turn off unnecessary notifications.

3 Resist the urge to switch to something new

There will always be a new idea or task to tackle. But switching from one to another will not make any progress in what you are doing. Even if you are bored, give it a chance. Don’t quit one habit after a week to try another. Don’t take on a new project until you have finished the current one.

4 Distinguish between important and urgent matters

We usually prioritize tasks with urgent deadlines, even if they are less important to us. But activities like calling grandma or going for a walk are not priorities, even though they make life balanced and give us valuable memories. Urgent and important: tasks that are valuable to you – they need to be completed as soon as possible. Not urgent but important: tasks that help you develop – they need to be added to the calendar. Urgent but unimportant: tasks that can be delegated to someone else. Not urgent and unimportant: tasks that need to be abandoned. Try to do as much as possible about important things, and minimize unimportant ones.

5 Manage your energy, not your time

To do this, you need to determine when you are most productive and distribute tasks based on your energy level. For example:

• If you're a morning person, schedule important tasks for the morning when you have the most energy. – If you're a night owl, work on projects that require concentration in the evening.
• If you have young children, your productive time will be when they are asleep or when someone else is watching them. Use these windows for your priorities.

6 Make a list of your obligations

We often take on too much, despite the fact that our strength and time are limited. Therefore, it is useful to periodically review our commitments:

• Make a list of everything you spend your time on, in as much detail as possible. – Divide these activities into categories: career, family, hobbies, and so on.
• Decide what percentage of time you would like to spend on each category.
• Reduce the number of less important responsibilities so that you have enough resources for the most important ones.
• Make a to-do list every day, taking into account the categories that are most important to you.

7 Try to “eat the frog” as quickly as possible

The frog is the most difficult or unpleasant task of the day. For example, working on a project you dream of doing, playing sports, writing a thousand words for a future book. Usually, you want to put off such tasks for later, but it is better to do them first. This way you will move forward, and everything else during the day will be easier. If you “eat a frog” every day, you will gradually achieve greater results.

8 Distribute tasks into blocks

This will help you build a schedule based on priorities and not waste time switching from one to another. Here's how the method works:

• Make a to-do list for the day. – Distribute similar tasks into blocks, for example, “Working with mail,” “Writing text,” “Meetings.”
• Calculate how much time each block will take.
• Add blocks to the calendar one by one.
• Move on to the next one only when you have finished the previous one.
• Move blocks around the calendar if necessary.

Try to have at least one block each day dedicated to your priorities.