What you need to accomplish within a certain period depends on what you want to achieve when. Reflect on your objectives and review how to get there. Once you have a big-picture view of the tasks to be accomplished, interim goals, and amounts of time involved, your next job is to plan the next few days of work effectively. Not everything is equally important or equally urgent. It is a good idea to break down your schedule into shorter periods, such as a week, and decide which tasks are especially important and which take priority.
You can mark individual items on a to do list in different colors or use what is known as an “Eisenhower Matrix.” Assigning your tasks to the four subcategories used in this method forces you to think about how important and how urgent the individual tasks are. Not all tasks are equally important, and you can’t get them all done in the same span of time.
Urgent | Not urgent | |
Important | Do it now | Don’t procrastinate for too long; definitely include in your long-term plans |
Not important | Do it later | Toss it or say no |
To keep track of how much work you have ahead of you during certain periods, you should make this kind of box repeatedly for each time span. Things that may not be urgent in May might become urgent by July. It is a good idea to update your project plans at certain intervals and reconsider your priorities so you can balance them with the needs of other plans and projects.
