Are you stuck with competing priorities, where multiple people are counting on you to deliver, and you just can’t possibly do them all at once? There are a lot of bad ways to get through that situation. There are also good ways.
3 Common Mistakes in Managing Competing Priorities
Let me start by sharing some of the things I’ve seen as decision criteria.
- Jumping to the most recent email in your inbox or neglecting earlier ones
- Prioritizing tasks based on who is the most demanding or intimidating rather than who is empathetic and kind
- Doing tasks for those you personally prefer or opting for the easiest work
None of these are good ways to deal with competing priorities.
4 Ways to Manage Competing Priorities
Since you can’t possibly clone yourself and do everything people want you to do at once, let’s talk about how to prioritize when there are competing priorities.
1. Triage
Triage is a concept that comes from medicine, particularly in emergencies or in crowded emergency rooms, where you have to decide who to help first. You’re looking at which people are the sickest, which situations are the most urgent, and where can we help the most. In the workplace, if you’re not working in the hospital, your version of triage is to ask four questions:
- How important is this? Does this have significant implications for customers or financial performance? How much is at stake? You can triage based on the importance of each task, determining which ones are more crucial than others.
- How urgent is it? Sometimes, something may be less important, but it needs to be done immediately because it’s time-sensitive or it becomes irrelevant. Urgency is another key factor to consider when triaging.
- How unique is it to you? Is this something that only you can do, or could someone else do it while you work on a priority that needs your unique expertise? Again, is it unique to you?
- How essential is the piece of the task that you’re thinking about? As you triage, you may find that only a small piece is important, urgent, and needs your expertise. In such situations, prioritize that piece and delegate other aspects that can be done later or by someone else.
This is how you triage competing priorities. When faced with three things that you’re expected to do all at once, consider where they stack up in their relative importance, urgency, and uniqueness to you.
2. Validate
It’s possible that you have autonomy and can triage and move forward on your own, but if there’s concern about whether you’ve made the right decision, or if there’s a possibility that you might face consequences or repercussions for prioritizing the wrong thing first, it makes a lot of sense to seek validation.
You can share the triage process with your boss. For example, you might say, “These three things have come in and they’re all expected at the same time. Based on importance, urgency, and uniqueness to me, here’s my plan for what I’m going to do. Does that work for you?” It still shows that you’re accountable, proactive, and can create a plan. It also leaves room for your boss to provide feedback or reprioritize if necessary.
3. Communicate
When you prioritize tasks, it affects the sequence of subsequent tasks. You put something first, which means you’ve delegated something to second and probably third. Communicating ensures transparency and prevents surprises for those who were attached to the second and third priorities.
This step is painful and many people skip it. They don’t want the blowback, they don’t want to disappoint somebody. But surprising someone with disappointment is much worse than telling them ahead of time. Don’t make that mistake. Communicate.
For example, you could explain, “This has priority because of X, Y, and Z. I’ve validated that. Here’s when I will have it for you. Alternatively, here’s someone else who might be able to do it right now.” Whatever you say, communicate to give others a chance to understand, adapt, and go for Plan B. This way, when you have competing priorities, you can avoid disappointing people.
4. Focus
This is the most important step when you have competing priorities. The tendency in that situation is to try and do everything at once, which leads to being overwhelmed. When you’re frazzled, your thoughtload increases, your workload comes down and your productivity decreases, so the best thing you can do when you’re facing three, six, or ten things is to do one with ruthless focus.
Focusing on that first priority, disabling notifications, keeping your phone out of sight, using a timer to keep your focus, and not doing anything else until you’re done is the fastest, most efficient way to get to priority two, and then priority three.
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If you have competing priorities, avoid prioritizing based solely on fear of the consequences. Choose wisely. Triage the importance, urgency, and essentiality of the pieces. Validate your prioritization choices, preferably with your manager, to make sure you’ve chosen wisely. Communicate with the people who are not top priority. And then focus, focus, focus!
Because you’re going to get things done. You’ll be amazed. You may end up doing the second priority, and even the third, in the time you thought it would take to do just one because you get that efficiency from really focusing on one thing.
For more tips on how to be more productive and use your time wisely, have a look at 5 Ways to Say No.
8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload
Video: 1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization