Even the savviest entrepreneurs struggle with prioritization skills. Face your fears by first defining them.
Illustration: Getty Images
Ask any entrepreneur to define fear and they will most likely describe it as a feeling that helps them to grow their business and themselves. However, theres one area where you may be inadvertently holding yourself back in the fear department: being confident making productivity-based decisions.
In my work as productivity coach, I see even the savviest entrepreneurs struggle with prioritization skills. Fortunately, the process of prioritizing tasks, to-dos, and assignments need not be stressful. When you define your fear and practice prioritization, youll find it gets easier. Heres a handy guide to help you identify what may be lurking underneath those swirling, unhelpful, prioritization-based fears, as well as what you can do about it.
Unfortunately, theres no prioritization silver bullet, especially when it comes to defining your fear. The only way to prioritize items is to actually do them. Remember, no one has a crystal ball. No one knows exactly what the future holds. Everyone is working with the information thats available to them, right here, right now. And thats exactly what you can use to your advantage.
How to deal with it: Gather all relevant information needed to prioritize tasks. Consider timelines, deliverables, resources, updates, materials, key stakeholders, and any other relevant details or considerations. Then, make your choice with confidence. Remember, should something not go exactly to plan, you can always course correct with that new information. Any decision you make now gives you key learnings for the future.
The Man Behind the Wheel of Driverless Trucks For Don Burnette, the autonomous vehicle debate was always about cars, but what about trucks? That thinking helped his startup, Kodiak Robotics, to become No. 20 on our list of the 5000 fastest growing companies in America. It takes a Village: The Team Behind Stephen Curry This also falls under the Im afraid of making a choice umbrella but is more nuanced. Obviously, everything in your business is important. All the different piecesfrom sales and operations to human resources and financeinfluence one another. However, you also need to accept the fact that you cant do everything at once. When you define this fear for what it is, you can make progress in ways you had not previously considered.
How to deal with it: Using a tool like the Eisenhower Box or a Decision Matrix can help you better understand the timeliness of your priorities. How urgent and important are your priorities in relationship to one another? Assign priority levels to tasks as necessary. Just because youre not working on a task right now doesnt mean you wont do it in the future.
The thought of prioritizing tasks can sometimes be overwhelming. There are so many items from which to choose, so what do you focus your attention on first? Define the fear in a thoughtful way. You can look at it in this way: You didnt build your business in one day. You did it one day at a time, and youll do the same when prioritizing tasks.
How to deal with it: Take five minutes to regroup and calm your thoughts. Identify a project youre currently working on. Next, identify a task that needs to be done today, tomorrow, and the day after. When you break down prioritization into smaller parts, it becomes more manageable. Best of all, the process allows you to gain a better sense of where you are spatially with your work.
This statement is similar to Im afraid of feeling overwhelmed. Its an avoidance technique that will set your schedule back further. So, define your fear. If you have time to decide what youll have for lunch today, then you have time to prioritize. The process need not be an hours-long event that takes up your entire day.
How to deal with it: Schedule at least 15 minutes to prioritize tasks every morning in your work calendar. If its already later in the day, set a timer for yourself for 10 minutes to identify your top tasks for the remainder of the day. Another approach is to simply swap out a time-sucking activity, like aimlessly scrolling through social media. And just like that, youve freed up time to prioritize your work.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
