Prioritization is the key

For the last few years, I see myself spending more time with people who are in the age group of 20-24 years. When I was at Cisco and Sudhari, most of my colleagues were fresh from college. Later when I was teaching at SITE, naturally I had spent good amount of time with the undergraduate engineering students. And now, as a training consultant, still I engaged more with the people of this age group.

I must say, these people are really wonderful. Many of them wanted to do something, but only few people know what is that they actually wanted to do. People usually ask me one of these two questions:

1. I wanted to do something really great. Suggest me what I should do.
2. I have lots of ideas, but the time is limited to work on them. And there are lots of contrasting demands. I am not able to focus.

While the first question should have a context based answer, the second question, fortunately, has an answer that fits into most of the situations. Let me discuss this point here.

First is that one should feel proud for having those many ideas or for having zeal to work on those many ideas. Naturally, time is in limited supply, for anybody. Even God has only 24 hours (if he lives on the mother Earth). How can we get maximum out of these 24 hours? Here is the one word solution: Prioritization.

One thing we have to remember is that we can not do all the things at once. We have to pick up of fewer number of tasks at a time, focus on them, complete them and then move on to the next set of tasks. The question again comes: Which of the tasks should be picked up? The answer is simple: Pick up the most urgent tasks which you can not delay any further. In fact there is nothing like a choice exists as far as urgent tasks are concerned. We are forced to take on urgent tasks, there is no other go.

Then if every one is picking up their urgent tasks, how only few of us are succeeding in completing them? Nice question. This is what I can say.

The tasks that are urgent need not be our most favorite tasks. We may get distracted to other 'interesting' things at the cost of the current work. This has to be taken care.

Here is the other failure factor: There may be a difficult task in pending state just because its not urgent. We may get nightmares whenever we think about that difficult task. Eventhough we work on other urgent tasks right now, part of the mind always goes around that difficult task. We get tempted to spend sometime on that task at the cost of the current work. It always leads to suboptimal results. Lesson to be learnt is that when you are working on a taks, be single minded. Complete it before you spend any quality time on anything else. We should not feel anxiety or irritation because of other other pending tasks. They will get their attention, once you complete the current work. So don't bother about them, now.

Having said that, I must say, we should actually make sure that no work slips into "urgency" zone. If we take enough care when that work was not urgent, it never gets into this firefighting zone. Spend some time daily on the important but not urgent tasks, as a habit. Activities like reading books, networking with people, getting reskilled and etc fall under this category. Couple of hours every day on these activities saves lot of time in future.

Here is the summary of what I wanted to say:

1. As a habit, spend 1-2 hours on activites that fetch long term results. They are not forced on you. So, you should have real commitment in working on them.
2. When some thing is really urgent, give maximum attention to it. Don't bother about the other things. They will get their due attention, later.
3. Always do one task at a time. Multitasking is good, but only when you are really good at it.
4. If there is lot of work, all of sudden, don't get irritated or stressed. Prioritize them and win one at a time.
5. Remain cool and have confidence in yourself. If you practice it at this age, it becomes part and parcel of your personality.