Determine the importance of your task before doing it

How to determine the most important 20% of the tasks

It's very important to determine the importance and value of your tasks before you start accomplishing them. If you pick out the most important 20% of all your tasks, they will cause 80% of your future results. It's well-known Pareto principle. How can you determine whether a task is important or not? Think about the consequences of task non-fulfillment or delay. Consider long-term advantages of this task. If this has significant influence on your or your team mates' future results, then it's exactly one of your most important tasks. Accomplishing this and other similar tasks, you will get 80% of your goals and success.

"Consider task importance" To Do List

• Look at your task list and think about each task importance
• Think what consequences may have each particular task, whether it has long-term benefits that will significantly influence your future work
• Think if this task procrastination will affect others and have damaging results in your future work
• If it is really necessary for you and your team to accomplish this task, set higher priority to it; to less significant tasks set lower priority
• Before doing the tasks, first sort them by their priority and start accomplishing the most important ones
• Use software to set tasks priority and sort them by priority

Action plan