Here are two approaches to prioritizing work that I always return to.
After you've written down all the things you have going on, weigh each one against these:
Importance: how impactful is the work?
Urgency: is this an immediate task or can it wait?
Size: is this a < 5 minute task or a 30+ minute task that requires deep work?
If a task feels way bigger than an hour or two, you may need to break it down into smaller tasks. For example, you might break it into a research or learning component, then a plan, then an action.
From here, you can use two 2x2 mental models to prioritize your work.
Mental model 1. Importance and size
This is a great model for prioritizing your daily to-do list.
It's most helpful as a way to avoid spending all of your day doing small tasks and never quite getting into the flow zone to tackle large important work.
| Small | Large | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | Do now or end of day | Schedule deep work |
| Unimportant | Batch or delegate | Delegate or drop |
If it's an important task that will take longer than 30 minutes, or requires deep focus, then schedule it in the calendar.
You might find that certain times of day or days of the week are best for this work. These deep-work periods are where most of the value-creation, innovation and creative problem solving takes place.
If it's important and small, consider knocking it out right away or at the end of the day.
If it's not important and small, leave it for now and batch it up. Think about why this work is on your to-do list and how you could delegate or pre-solve it.
If it's a large task that isn't important, be honest with yourself and either delegate it or drop it. A big project that isn't actually important is one of the easiest ways to lose a week.
Mental model 2. Importance and urgency
It's easy to feel that everything needs to be done right now. But if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.
Most of the time, there is actually very little that is urgent - as in it needs to be done right now.
Most things can wait until the end of the day, at least.
Examples of highly urgent work include a critical outage or security incident, or a blocker to a very expensive project.
Medium urgency work (reply the same day) might be a deal that needs momentum, or you might be a blocking factor to someone else's important work.
| Not urgent | Urgent | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | Strategic: make time | Obvious work |
| Unimportant | Avoid | Tempting distractions |
I'm always trying to protect the top-left of this grid: important but not urgent. It's the first thing to get crowded out, and usually where the most valuable work lives.
Once you've sorted what matters, timeboxing your to-do list helps you actually get through it.
References
The importance and urgency framework is explained well in the book The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier.
Saying no and having a "not doing" list is also a helpful approach: https://tim.blog/2007/08/16/the-not-to-do-list-9-habits-to-stop-now/