Behavior-Based Leadership
and Followership
Training
Founded 2010
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June 15, 2025
TIME MANAGEMENT AND TASK PRIORITIZATION
If you’ve ever watched people work, or complete activities and tasks, it doesn’t take long to see how much time is spent being productive and accomplishing tasks and activities that help accomplish the goals, or which are pressing to the person, team, or organization. Likewise, it doesn’t take long to see how much time is wasted on tasks and activities that are neither important or pressing. But many people don’t recognize that there is a difference when they are given tasks. So, how do we prioritize our tasks and/or activities to accomplish tasks to maximize our productivity given that some things are important and some things are pressing?
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First let’s be clear about what “important” and “pressing” mean:
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Important activities have an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals, whether these are professional or personal. (These activities are goal critical.)
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Pressing activities demand more immediate attention, are usually associated with achieving someone else's goals. These activities demand attention because the consequences of not dealing with them are immediate or time-sensitive. (These activities are time-sensitive or time critical)
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So, back to the question: How do we prioritize our tasks and/or activities to accomplish the things that are important and/or pressing?
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When prioritizing activities or tasks there are four possibilities:
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Important and Pressing:
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Important but Non-Pressing
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Pressing but Not Important
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Non-Pressing and Not Important
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Some strategies for prioritizing each:
1. Important and Pressing: Eliminate last-minute activities by planning ahead and avoiding procrastination. Since you can't always predict or avoid some issues or crisis, the best approach is to leave some time in your schedule to allow for unexpected issues and unplanned important activities. These items should be the highest priority.
2. Important but Non-Pressing: These are the activities that help you achieve your personal and professional goals, and complete important work. Make sure that you have plenty of time to do these things properly, so that they do not become pressing. Evaluate the priority of these tasks based on goal completion criteria.
3. Pressing but Not Important: A common source of such activities is other people, pressing but not important tasks are things that prevent you from achieving your goals. Sometimes it's appropriate to say "no" to people politely, or to encourage them to solve the problem themselves. I used to tell my direct reports, “If you bring me a problem, you need to bring me a possible solution.” This helps people take ownership of issues, and attempt to problem-solve themselves. This is especially useful with people that have procrastinated and now the issues are pressing or important for them, but not for you, it keeps their issues from becoming pressing but not important for you. Evaluate the priority of these tasks based on time completion criteria.
4. Non-Pressing and Not Important: These activities are just a disruption circumvent them if possible. Can simply ignore or abandon them? some activities may be what other people want you to do, even though they don't contribute to your desired outcomes. Can you say "no" politely, and explain why you can’t do it? Sometimes if people see that you are clear about your goals and boundaries, they will often avoid asking you to do "not important" activities in the future. These activities should be the least priority.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER… Good time management has as much to do with being effective as it does with being efficient. People can stay busy and accomplish nothing, or with proper prioritization, people can be efficient in time-bound activities, as well as effective in accomplishing goals for the individual, team and the organization. Knowing how to prioritize can help increase your effective and efficient use of time.
Quotes to Put into Practice…
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“The key is not to prioritize what’s on you schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey
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“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” – Johann von Goethe