4 ways to get your week in order

Sometimes it’s easy to prioritize your daily tasks. An average day usually contains at least a few things that can be pushed further down your to-do list. But what happens when you’re swamped and everything seems super important? Here are four ways you can organize your priorities and get out from underneath that pile on your desk…

Assess the situation: Figure out which items have the largest effect on your team and your members. Are certain things impacting members directly? Are other people waiting on you for something before they can continue with their own work? Taking a peek at the bigger picture can give you a feel for the true importance of the items on your to-do-list.

Mess with your own mind: Okay it’s not really that dramatic, but let’s say you’ve got seven things you need to finish before the end of the week. Six of these things will take a couple of hours each and the last one will take three days. If you start on the big assignment on Monday, you’ll probably still have six things left on Thursday morning. If you start with the shorter assignments, you’ll more than likely be able to start looking at the big one by late Tuesday afternoon. It’s the same amount of cake any way you slice it, but it might feel like you’ve got less on your plate. That might lift your spirits.

Dismiss disruptions: The most important thing when dealing with a list of important tasks, is just to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction. Most emails can wait a few minutes. Try turning off your phone for a while, close your door, and get focused on getting stuff done.

Coffee: I’m not one of these psychos that has “coffee” in their dating profile bio, but I do recognize the significance of caffeine. That’s all folks.