Running a business usually means putting in over 40 hours a week. In fact, if you’re the typical entrepreneur, you have more ideas you want to implement than you have time for! That’s when proactive, strategically-executed prioritization can make all the difference.

So Hard to Choose!

If you have lots of ideas in your head or on your to-do list that are not getting done, you’re certainly not alone. Here’s a process for helping you decide what to do first, next, and not at all.

First, write down all your ideas, tasks, to-dos, projects, and anything you need to do on a daily basis. Use a spreadsheet and list each item in a row by itself. Later you’ll want to be able to sort the list, so we recommend using Excel or another spreadsheet software.

Once you have everything down in writing, you will be amazed at how much this unclutters your thinking. You will also have all your great ideas captured so you don’t forget them. You might feel very overwhelmed at this point, but don’t stop now — relief will come soon enough.

Now, add some information about each item, creating four additional columns:

  1. Is this item about working IN your business (client work, overhead, etc.) or ON your business (new products or new services, developing procedures, hiring more staff, marketing, creating new partnerships)?
  2. Is this item revenue-generating? Or will you only lose revenue if you don’t do it?
  3. Can you delegate this task, or do you have to be the one to do it?
  4. If you were to hire someone to do this task, how much would it be worth per hour?

Then, analyze your choices. Once you have these additional items filled in, you can go wild with opportunities. Here are some very cool eye-opening activities to try:

  • Separate tasks that are working ON vs. IN your business. There is never enough time to work on your business, so force it by blocking out a few hours or a half-day a week and do it, no matter what. It might be the best way to make progress in your business.
  • Sort the list by how much revenue the task could generate or how much potential it has, and decide how to prioritize from there. If you need help calculating the ROI (return on investment) of an idea, contact us so we can help you with that.
  • Take a look at what you marked “not able to delegate,” and ask, “Why not?” Do you need to write a procedure? Do you need more staff? Does your current staff need training? Or do you need to learn to let go? Whatever it is, and especially if there are a lot of these items, tackle these roadblocks now so you don’t become the bottleneck in your own business.
  • Sort the list by “column D” above, the market value you recorded for the task. Then ask yourself what your hourly rate is. How many tasks are you doing that are below your hourly rate? Hiring someone to do your lowest level tasks could very well be another item you need to add to your new to-do list!

This last one is really important, because it can so strongly affect the profitability of your business. The last thing you want to do is go backwards and give yourself a demotion with a pay decrease, but that’s exactly what you’re doing each time you do a task yourself that’s at a low market rate.

Now you can prioritize with confidence. With all of this information in an organized spreadsheet, you will gain the clarity you need to make some powerful decisions about how to spend your time. This will also help you use automated to-do apps like Todoist, Wunderlist, and Any.do much more easily and efficiently.

Time

There’s nothing more precious and scarce than our time. Every day, we have a choice about how to spend it, but too often we get caught up in the urgent, but not important, daily “fires.” We hope this exercise in prioritization will help you take a step back and look at what’s important instead of what’s merely urgent.

“Mixed Messages” by Rich Anderson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0