One of the most difficult things to learn how to do as you grow your career is manage your time. That is because your responsibilities change with the roles that you serve in, the value you bring to the team, and the expectations put on you by various managers.
When you are just starting out, the expectations are often clearest. Someone else is setting your priorities, or at least defining clear goals. So the most difficult part about managing your time is learning how to do things correctly in the shortest amount of time.
As you progress from your initial role, you’ll be expected to do more. You might work with various teams and take on different responsibilities. You could face conflicting priorities while supporting different but equally vital company objectives. It’s crucial to learn how to focus your time on what matters most. This often involves figuring out how to automate, delegate, or remove less important tasks.
If you’re fortunate enough to step into a management position, leading a team and having a bigger role in your company’s strategy, this skill is essential. You’ll struggle without knowing how to set priorities. You will also need to assist others in setting their priorities.
Unfortunately, this is a skillset that is not taught in any class. It’s one that you are expected to learn on your own. If you’re lucky, you have a manager or mentor who can help.
If not, let me offer a simple 2×2 matrix you can use to determine where your team should focus it’s time and energy.
The Matrix
What you need to do to start out is create a full list of all the projects you are considering. Usually, this list is far too long for the size of your team and the resources allotted. That’s a good thing – a sign of an ambitious agenda. And it’s the precise reason that we need the matrix, to help us prioritize.
For each item on the list, then you are going to rate it’s potential impact and its level of effort required. For both, you are either going to list them as High or Low. For example, if you think a project is likely to lead to big gains in revenue but take your whole team six months to complete, you might rate it High for both impact and effort.
To construct the matrix, we need a sheet of paper with four quadrants. On the vertical axis, we are going to put “IMPACT”. On the horizontal axis, we are going to write “EFFORT”. Then divide them up into High and Low, so that you are left with something like this:
Once you have everything on your list categorized into one of the four quadrants, you are ready to prioritize.
High Impact/Low Effort
Always start working on projects in this quadrant. These are your easy wins. That you expect high returns for low cost, or low effort, is a sure sign that these are the projects where you will get the greatest “bang for the buck”.
Focus on these first and ignore the others until everything here is done.
High Impact/High Effort
We always want to maximize our impact. With that in mind, though some might argue to focus next on the other projects that don’t require much time or resources, I would recommend jumping to the high impact, high effort projects. These are those priorities that will require a significant amount of investment, but when all is said and done, your company will reap the rewards for your expenditure.
Low Impact/Low Effort
Low impact projects may not mean that much to your company in terms of improvement on the grand scale, but if it doesn’t take much to achieve incremental gains, they are still worth doing. These projects may make even more sense if your team is under pressure to produce short term wins, or lacks the resources to complete your higher impact projects.
Getting these items done checks a box and moves you in the right direction, even if it is in smaller steps.
Low Impact/High Effort
Anything that winds up in this quadrant should stay off your to-do list. It’s going to cost a lot to get done, without providing significant benefits to your team or your company. This is grunt work, and if you find yourself working on grunt work, you are ignoring potential successes elsewhere.
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