Setting priorities is a decision-making process by which you rank in order of importance the tasks you or your staff members must do. By completing the tasks on your list in order, you will achieve your goals. It sounds easy—but it’s not. In fact, priority-setting and sticking to the agreement you make with yourself will be major challenges for you as a manager. Our eight-page e-Topic How to tackle your priorities elaborates upon several important strategies to help you draw up a priority list—and make it work…

1. Address management problems first.
2. Group your priorities meaningfully.
3. Do it – or remove it.
4. Resist chopping and changing.
5. Balance your priorities.
6. Reassign priorities when necessary.
7. Follow up on your priorities.
8. Confront those difficult tasks head-on.
9. Communicate all vital information.
10. Treat your office like an operating room.
11. Warm up with a ‘little thing’.
12. Accept that you will always have a priority list.

The e-Topic concludes with a wealth of useful hints, advice, anecdotes and inspiration to help the reader better understand and implement the core material presented.

Do you want a brief fragment from the wealth of practical advice in this e-Topic?
“If you want to increase your effectiveness by making better use of your time, then you should begin by making your ‘to-do’ list work for you better by adopting this timely advice: Shorten your ‘to-do’ list to ‘must-dos’. Why? A shorter list will energize you simply because it looks do-able. And, to decide what tasks rate as ‘must-dos’, answer these two basic questions:
‘What will happen if I do this?’
‘What will happen if I don’t?’ “

Simple, step-by-step solutions to your management problems and issues – that’s the aim of our e-Topics series. For busy managers, it’s literally management2go!