Prioritizing Your Duties as a Leader

Don’t sweat the small stuff! When you’re tasked with an overwhelming number of responsibilities, your energy needs to be focused on the projects that give you the biggest return on your time.

Pareto’s 80/20 principle (as coined by pioneering management consultant Joseph M. Juran), suggests that in many situations, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. John Maxwell adopted this principle in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

In his Law of Priorities, Maxwell asserts that “if you focus your attention on the activities that rank in the top 20 percent in terms of importance, you will have an 80 percent return on your effort”.

Prioritizing important things in our personal and professional life can be an incredibly effective method for dealing with a heavy workload, but it is something that few do. Take a few minutes during lunch or afternoon coffee break (assuming you have time), and follow the exercise below.

Make a List of Your Current Obligations:

• The initial list shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to complete, and you can always update it later as you complete tasks or take on new responsibilities.

Prioritize These Obligations:

• For professional obligations consult your supervisor to ensure that you are focusing on the right issues.
• Personal (family/friend) obligations should be prioritized with the consultation of your significant other. Your wife may feel that painting the nursery is more important than changing the oil in your motorcycle.

Focus Your Energy:

• The less time you spend worrying about an overwhelming number of tasks, the more time you can spend completing them.

Whether its professional responsibilities, or responsibilities in your personal life, your chances for achieving success are better when you focus your time on the most important issues.

Tagged as: pareto principle, prioritizing