Four Prioritization Frameworks To Help You Nail Work-Life Balance

To-Do: Here is where every single task will start. Every task that an individual or a team needs to perform is listed out in this first column. This can be done on paper, whiteboards, chalkboards, or online Kanban boards. Using online Kanban boards also gives you the ability to prioritize your to-do list using “low,” “medium,” or “high” urgency labels.

In-Progress: This is the column where you now have to make an executive decision for the number of tasks you want to handle simultaneously. Ideally, you should work on one thing simultaneously, moving to the next tasks only once you’ve finished the previous. However, in larger projects, you may have to do multiple things at once, and this is a great way to move all your WIP tasks in one column so you can keep track of them.

Complete: When you’re done with a task, you can move it to the ‘complete’ column. This is a good way to check things off your to-do list and get a sense of satisfaction as you successfully move down your to-do and in-progress lists. This is especially beneficial in a team, where everyone can keep track of what’s already done and plan their next moves accordingly.

Source: Personal Kanban Board by SlideUpLift

Check out our library of Kanban board templates for powerpoint to visualize the work progress. Kanban Boards are also widely used as effective Agile Project Management Frameworks to keep projects on track.

4. THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

Dr. Joseph M. Juran introduced the Pareto Principle as an interpolation of an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto’s work, which claimed that 80% of results come from only 20% of your efforts or inputs. This works in task management to understand the value of tasks that you need to undertake in a day. This principle generally holds for work tasks as well, as 20% of your tasks would create 80% of the impact, i.e., provide the most results that you would need in your workplace. The tasks that have the most impact on your overall working need to be prioritized over tasks that don’t contribute to your overall productivity.

Another interesting cut of this principle is that 20% of your tasks will take 80% of your time. These tasks may be different from those that create 80% of the impact referenced earlier, which means you will need to explicitly identify items in your to-do list that will take longer to do and deliberate about how to get them done.

How To Use The Pareto Principle

Benefits of Using Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle is great at categorizing your tasks based on their tangible effect on your progress. It allows for the most effective time management planning, as you get the most out of your work in the least amount of time, increasing your net productivity for the day. However, it takes some practice to step in and out of work flow to get this perspective. Once it becomes second nature, it creates a quantum impact on individual and business productivity.

Pareto Rule

Source: Pareto Rule Templates by SlideUpLift

Pareto Principle

Task management and Prioritization are essential strategies to cope with an ever-increasing workload, expectations, and those ever-shortening deadlines. Regardless of the framework you choose, having a task management strategy handy is most definitely advisable and can be vouched for by many SlideUpLift users who have benefitted from these approaches.

SlideUpLift offers a collection of very effective task management and prioritization frameworks that allow you to make your own personal, team, and business planners and optimize your workflows in a way that makes sense for you. You can look at our extensive collection of fully editable templates and are the perfect solution for any business professional looking for a good personal time management tool!