Time Management: The Impact Of Prioritization In Workplace

Prioritization plays a key role in time management just as it does in other areas of life and business. When it comes to us as individuals, it is something we act upon subconsciously. Before we look at the importance of prioritization in a workplace environment, it may be noteworthy to say something about the role it plays in our lives as individuals.

Prioritization In Our Lives As Individuals

It is common to have a 'To Do List' and that list is supposed to help set things in order of priority as it is related to time. One thing that should be noted here is that, it is not necessarily what we note down or think is important, and mentally or physically put at the top of our  priority list that matters, it is actually what we do.

That is, we may say within ourselves that dashing to the grocery store is simply top priority. We may go as far as writing it down or lifting our right hands to affirm and pledge that, it is indeed the most pressing and important thing to do in this material time. Yet it is what you end up doing that is the real number 1 in your scale of preference. 

It is not what you put on paper or in your mind, but what you do at that given time. Hence if you say dashing down to the grocery store in your top priority, but you sat  in front of the television to watch a show, that show is your real priority.

The long and short of this is that, it is what you ended up doing that took precedence over what you claimed was at the top of your list. Therefore, your real priority list is not what you wrote down in the morning for that day but what you wrote down at night as the things you did for that day. Try doing this and compare the two, it will give you a very good idea of what your priorities are and how far they are from what you think, say, or write down. Priority is not about what you will do but what you did.

Prioritization In A Workplace Environment

We have said more than a side note on setting priorities on an individual level. Let us look at prioritization in a workplace environment. Setting your priorities in a workplace environment may be “slightly” different with that of personal prioritization because of a little word called accountability.

In a workplace environment, you may not be able to afford to say one thing and do another because you will be held accountable for your actions in ways that may go as far as costing you your job. It is therefore important to take the issue of prioritization seriously, especially when it comes to time management because the expectation of the people around you or the organization as a whole may go past the idea of an aspiration to something more grounded, in the way of holding you accountable if you do not meet deadlines.

Put The Most Important Thing First

As a manager or any level of worker that is accountable to someone at the top, it is normal to have a priority list whether in the physical or mental sense with respect to tasks you want to achieve. There will be those that you just know you have to do while you might get some that you also just know you will never do. It depends on certain factors, which we will be looking at once we are done with this.

Putting the most important thing first in a workplace environment has a lot to do on the who rather than the what. Let me say that again; the what might be really important but it is the who that takes precedence over the what.

We can break this further to say that, if the CEO asks you to get him or her a cup of coffee, that will be more important than your direct boss asking you to go get him or her the project file both of you have been working on to close a deal.

Prioritization puts position at the top of the list before it puts the assignment or task. It is important you allow this to sink in, because we are talking of a workplace environment. In the same vein, you may come to office on one spiritedly morning, with a nicely typed list of tasks you plan doing for the day, listing them according to their order of importance. Be ready to discard that list or include something else when position places a demand  that is not in your nicely typed list on you.

How does this affect time management? Of what has this got to do with time management? It has everything to do with time management in a workplace environment, because your time belongs to the organization, yet how the organization places a demand on that time leaves room for a lot of interpretation on your part. 

This is actually not a good thing because it implies you have to do a lot of balancing act on your part, in determining what has already been officially designated as being important (just as the individual priority list we talked about at the beginning of this article) against what is actually important (i.e. the demand placed on you that might have nothing to do with what is officially stated).

We are still looking at the impact of prioritization in a workplace environment as it relates with time management. The previous part  has shown that it is more than putting down a list and running through them. The major theme of the first part was:

Prioritization puts position at the top of the list before the assignment or task

That is, "the who" is more important than "the what," and we went on to say that, you need to know what to give your time to in other for that time to be productive and not detrimental to you. We continue by expounding on this theme.

Knowing The Most Important Things: The 4 Workplace Demands

Four set of people place a demand on your time in a workplace environment and things can become confusing and precarious if you do not know how to manage your priority list, so that, you can manage your time in the productive manner possible. The four sets of people that place a demand on your time are:-

• Your Boss or those At the top


• Your colleague or those by your side


• Your Juniors or those below


• Yourself

This has been placed in their order of preference with regards to position over tasks and you are at the bottom because your personal demand in a workplace environment is the least important of the four.

What Your Boss Wants

What your boss wants, takes precedence in your priority list. He or she is the one that pays the bills as it were. The boss is also the one that determines who gets promoted or given a handsome bonus. You should not be afraid of offending the guy that is just over you, especially when it is the overall boss that has called upon you to fulfill a task. All the others will do well to give you the required space to get that done.

Every other thing becomes secondary when your boss places such a demand on you and this includes your daily target that has been set by the organization even when the task has nothing to do with your target.

What You Colleague Wants

It will be easy to say you should not place this above your own given task because your colleagues are basically competing to move ahead of you in the business. They may be competing with you, and you should indeed not pick what you colleague wants you to do over what you are supposed to be doing. The issue here is that, you should still place them above your set tasks in your list of priorities. After all, your juniors are also in that list and I have said they too should be placed above you.

This means there is a benefit you can get from this that may not be directly linked to doing their job at the expense of yours. The first thing is that, they will not ask you to do that, but they might need you to do something for them that might take a bit of your time. What we are talking about here is the productive use of your time because that is basically the essence of time management.

The productive use of your time will place attending to your colleague higher than you in the workplace environment, because it opens other door of opportunities.

• Expanded network and contacts as you get to connect and work with people in ways you may not have had if you just faced your own tasks.


• Experience as you get to garner more of that under your belt.


• Favors returned and they get to be obligated to you in one form or the other


• Get a lot of goodwill.


• Opportunities for promotion as this are linked to your expanded network and favor you granted.
•  

What Your Juniors Want

The time you give to juniors can be more important than what you give to those on top or your colleagues. With such people, you get to build both goodwill and loyalty. Goodwill is a great commodity in the workplace environment, but it becomes a potent force when it is combined with loyalty.

• Juniors find it easier to be loyal because they are not competing with you directly.


• They are more eager to pay back as they feel indebted to you


• Being in good stead with them is noticed by those higher up the ladder


• They are dedicated to your success so when they find themselves as members of your team in a project, they are ready to give their all.

I hope you can now see why you are at the bottom of the scale when it comes to deploying your time in the workplace environment in the most productive way.

Now does this mean that you should not attend to your tasks? What it means is that you should know where to place your priority in the light of the dynamics of a workplace environment. Besides you can find yourself in a situation where your tasks become easier to execute because you have great commodities, like favors, goodwill and loyalty to tap.

We have looked at how your priority list in a workplace environment should follow after the peculiar dynamics of such environment, where the position of the person that has given you a task is more important than the content of the task. We have linked this to how time management actually means how to maximize the productivity of your time in the workplace environment.

Summary of The Impact of Prioritization I And II

• Put the most important thing first.


• Putting the most important thing first does not mean your tasks will hold priority over others.


• You can identify the important things by looking at what your boss or those higher than you are demanding from you, what your colleagues are demanding from you, what those below you are demanding from you, and what you are demanding from yourself.


• Bosses are happy when you address issues they deem to be critical.


• You can manage your time better if you set things of high priority in periods of the day you are most productive.


• Setting your priority gives you an opportunity to see what you can postpone and what you must address.

We want to look at a couple of areas where prioritization in the workplace environment is of great benefit.

Pushing High Priority Tasks To Periods When You Are Most Productive

Prioritization gives you the chance to address or tackle issues when you are at your most productive level of the working day. You best period of the working day may be any one or the following:

• Early hours of your arrival at the office


• Just before the lunch break


• Just after lunch break


• In the afternoon


• Towards closing hours

It may be any or none but people tend to be more connected to certain times of the day when they are either more mentally alert or just more relaxed. You can prioritize task based on your day-weather-personality report as it were i.e. shifting the most important things to the period you are most productive.

Another way of looking at this is that, you can pick the worst possible time for you to deal with some of the more tedious tasks on your To Do List. This could be when you feel you must be in a certain mood in order to successfully accomplish such a task. The whole idea is that, you already know the tasks at hand before the day and know just where and when to slot each task so that it will give you the best out of it.

Prioritization Helps You To Know What To Postpone And What  To Address

You get to know what you can afford to postpone and what you must deal with. It is not just about postponing or addressing pressing issues, the workplace environment is a place where negotiations take place every day and deals are struck. That is, knowing what you have on your desk will place you to place the right calls and make the right deals, as it were with respect to negotiating what you are supposed to handle, or could take up an aspect for you and just juggle things around until you know what you must address.

This is ideal when your desk has more than you can handle and you already applied the principle of we harped on in the Part II of this series with respect to placing others before you in your priority list. You can tap from the favor and goodwill of others to shift tasks and get them organized in such a way that you can easily address them in a more convenient manner.

Prioritization is an integral part of time management. It gives you a clear map of the areas you need to concentrate on before starting and keeps you focused on achieving set goals within the stipulated time.

Golden Rule Of Prioritization In Workplace Environment

The golden rule of prioritization in a workplace environment is that nothing is set in stone. You have to be flexible enough to know that something might come up that will make everything on your To Do List become relatively unimportant. You can also get a pressing issue on your desk that has to be given priority over every other assignment.

Prioritization can make everyone about you happy. Knowing what you must immediately address will create the right impact in your workplace environment that all the right people will notice.

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