Tricks for Tackling Top Tasks: Procrastination Busters

Guest post by John A. Estrella, PhD, CMC, PMP
Agilitek Corporation

In this post, guest blogger John Estrella shares a numbers-based method designed to kick procrastination and provide clarity on prioritizing your task list. We frequently fall into the pit of subjective prioritization – what we FEEL like we can and want to do, versus what really needs to get done. This system lends a sense of objectivity to help us get on top of our workload.

Before you can work on your top tasks, you need to have a holistic view of your entire workload. It is imperative that you create a list of all outstanding tasks. After creating your tasks list, apply the UID Technique and the Rule of 1/3 to prioritize your workload. These simple yet practical task prioritization tricks will help you focus your efforts on the important tasks. You can also use the Huge Hurdle Method to overcome common procrastination pitfalls.

UID stands for Urgency, Importance and Delegate. Essentially, you need to assign numerical values to each task based on its urgency and importance. By multiplying these two factors, you can determine the task’s priority. The delegate component prompts you to decide if a given task can be or should be delegated to someone else.

Given the difficulties of ranking and rating equally important tasks, the Rule of 1/3 forces you to designate 1/3 of your tasks as “high” and another 1/3 as “low.” The remaining 1/3 of your tasks, obviously, will be “medium.” Let’s try to apply these tricks using the eight steps below.

1. Create a list of your outstanding tasks
2. Determine the urgency of each task (tasks that need to be completed in a day or two should get a value of 5; tasks that need to be completed within a week should get a value of 3; and tasks that can be put off for another week should have a value of 1)
3. Designate 1/3 of your tasks as “high importance” (give each task a value of 5)
4. Identify the bottom 1/3 of your list as “low important” (give each task a value of 1)
5. Categorize the remaining tasks as “medium importance” (give each task a value of 3)
6. Multiply the urgency and importance ratings to get the priority for each task
7. Sort the tasks in descending order based on priority
8. Delegate tasks that can be delegated to shorten your task list

Focus your effort on the top three tasks. It is good to concentrate on no more than three tasks so that you can quickly close them off. It will also give you a sense of accomplishment which will encourage you to work on the remaining tasks. By having three items on your plate, you can switch on the other two tasks while waiting for a response from someone else.

There will be times that although you have your top three tasks clearly spelled out, you will still have a difficult time getting started. In such situation, you can apply the Huge Hurdle Method to overcome common procrastination pitfalls. For example, your task might say “finalize the executive report.” The actual task itself may only take 1-2 hours to complete but you dread asking a particular colleague for comments. You also do not like receiving criticisms from the editorial team. Because of these, you may end up assigning a lower priority to the executive report because there are portions of it that you really do not want to work on.

The Huge Hurdle Method suggests that you break such task into smaller tasks: ask colleague for comments, send the draft executive report to the editorial team and finalize the executive report. In doing so, you are “dividing and conquering” your misguided perception of a simple task into smaller manageable pieces. With these three terrific tricks for tackling top tasks, you should be able to shorten your to do list very quickly.

Dr. John A. Estrella, CMC, PMP, CBAP, CTFL, CSTE, specializes in helping senior management deliver large and complex IT projects. John worked on various consulting engagements for some of the world’s most respected organizations in Asia, North America and Europe. In addition to his management consulting career, he shares his unique and rare blend of expertise by authoring books and courses in project management, business analysis and software testing which are available in Canada, U.S., U.K., France, Sweden, Japan, India and other countries. John was awarded a scholarship by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Educational Foundation for his doctoral studies. He is a member of PMI, CMC-Canada, IIBA, ASQ, CAPS, NSA, IFFPS, IAC and TASSQ. On the personal side, he is a husband, father, Scout leader, martial artist, marathon runner, triathlete, scuba diver and avid outdoor person.

Check out John Estrella’s blog and follow him on Twitter for additional tips and tricks related to project management and collaboration.