Stephen Covey wrote a book along these same lines, First Things First [1], which advises to first define your roles in life, such as developer, parents, home owner, and so on, then identify the priorities in each of those areas, and schedule those things into your week first. He gives the "importance/urgency" matrix which is helpful for identifying which things you should be focusing on. After you have scheduled the important things into your week, you can schedule the unimportant items.
Having said that, you still have to make choices and stick to them. For this, you need to look at the science of habit change, which a good book is The Power of Habit [2]
The "most important thing first" can sometimes get in the way, I find. Maybe that thing is not yet clear in my head, or seems overwhelmingly difficult. Diving in with a less important task first can sometimes be a way to build up to tackle the more urgent tasks.
I have felt very much like this in the past, but no so much any more. .. my thinking is:
Some things are just part of the responsibility of being a grown up. Home maintenance, driver for children, doing taxes, etc. These are your baseline priorities that you don't get to choose.
Some of these sound like they occupy a rotating priority slot. House and car purchases do take a big commitment and require prioritization (especially if you build) but they are temporarily a priority. It is usually your choice to make these a priority, and they are rare.
Keeping a smaller priority list means saying 'no' to more things too, like being 'tech support geek for wifi and computer issues' or vehicle maintenance. These priorities are fully under your control.
It sounds like you do know how to prioritize. It doesn't make sense to talk about priorities and ignore family and life responsibilities; they obviously come out of the same pool of time as work/career priorities.
I've found that when we are confident, relaxed and grounded in the present moment, prioritisation tends to take care of itself, in as much as 'what's next' becomes quite clear and obvious. So (at least to me) the problem of priorities is really a symptom of the greater issue of how stay relaxed and centred in the natural 'flow' of your project/start-up. This is not so easy, particularly if this is your first start up because, almost by definition, you are working outside of your old comfort zones. But I wrote a little piece* about this that might help.
Also, it can help if you keep a list of low complexity, low priority tasks that you can pick from as your fancy takes you, when your motivation is low or you are just having an off day. You'll be suprised how ticking off these low priority tasks will give you a sense of progress that restores your clarity and motivation to tackle those bigger, more complex milestones. Good luck :)
I think this is just a corollary of having your priorities straight. You'll likely prioritize the most important things first if you have a clear goal of what you want.
A lot of people are overwhelmed with "urgent" tasks and in that state, they find it hard to even realise that some are more important than others. The discipline to say no, I'll do this one really important thing first and everything else can wait isn't something everybody is born with.
Do you know that Time Management Matrix with urgent/non-urgent on one side and important/not-important on the other?
Most of the time, life pushes us towards the urgent & important, and even urgent & not-important. When you have a busy life (full time job building a side business with a family with kids), it's just very hard to put the non-urgent & important on the agenda.
Prioritization will depend on your goals, so it is hard to give specific advice. But I will say that defining your goals is the first step. Once you have those, you can figure out which tasks take you towards those goals most effectively, which tasks are blocking others, and prioritize accordingly.
FWIW, I split my tasks into three lists - Personal Tasks, Home/Property Maintenance (I live on a 40 acre hobby farm, so this adds up), and Work Tasks. Personal Tasks are driven by my goals to stay healthy and create artwork. Home/Property tasks are driven by my goals to increase food production at my home and improve our self-sustainability, and Work tasks follow my employer's goals.
Your goals likely won't match mine, but a similar breakdown might help.
Agreed. I was asked by my boss to "examine my priorities" when I came in 5 after 8 from driving by son to his new school (we were moving, I wanted him to be in same school for the whole year).
Next morning I delivered my prioritized list to him - work was #12. Try it, you will be surprised.
Don't get me wrong, money is part of the equation for me, but certainly I won't sacrifice health, family, security etc for a little bit more of it (or for a particular job etc).
One way to prioritize information is by how much time it saves you. Knowing how to tie your shoes, or put clothes on, are very high priority - these are quick to learn (for a relatively developed brain) and save a lot of time (small amounts, but on a daily basis). The opportunity cost is very low, and the alternative's cost - that is, having to look up how to tie your shoes every day - is very high.
The basics of daily living, then, are all high priority. After that, what's what?
For me it's been helpful to understand who benefits from my actions in that particular moment, and then prioritized the ones where I benefit too.
In personal finance context they say to pay yourself first. I think this also applies when e.g. prioritizing health. And when paying yourself first, this also means doing things when most energy is available and leaving other things for when you're tired.
Maintain a prioritised list of things to do and always work on #1 priority. In other words, don’t fix the TODO’s if it is not #1 priority. It’s that simple really.
Having said that, you still have to make choices and stick to them. For this, you need to look at the science of habit change, which a good book is The Power of Habit [2]
[1] http://www.amazon.com/First-Things-Understand-Often-Arent/dp...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What-Business/dp/08129...
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