SiteThe Rule of Four
If you have trouble getting started on important projects because you have so many other things to do, follow the advice of a brilliant writer I know and abide by the “Rule of Four”: At the beginning of the day or in the evening before you go to bed, make a list of the four things that must get done that/the next day. Then, don’t do anything but those four things. Once they’re done, you can attack other items on your to-do list. This forces you to prioritize so you don’t end up running around putting out small fires all day, ignoring the bigger blazes that are more worthy of your attention.
I’ve been doing this for a week or two, and it really helps me get more focused when fifty thousand unfinished tasks are banging around in my brain. My list might look like this: “1) Answer student e-mails. 2) Write the first 500 words of article X. 3) E-mail five sources to set interviews for article Y. 4) Call all the people on my ‘Phone’ list.” (I use context lists à la Getting Things Done, so all the calls I need to make are in one place.)
Four is a doable number, and the faster I get those things done, the sooner I can get started on other tasks. At the same time, even if I get only those four things done in one day, I feel pretty good about it because those were my top-priority tasks.
Do you have any tips for regaining focus and concentrating on your top priorities when you have too many things to do? Post them in the Comments! [lf]
3 Responses to “The Rule of Four”
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Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell
Said this on August 29th, 2007 at 7:00am:I brought a few helpful habits with me from the corporate world. This goes along with the Franklin daytimer training I received as a bank manager. Prioritize A the things that *have* to get done, B for things that should and C for deadlines that are out on the calendar. The A’s get done and the B’s and C’s eventually move to A’s. It’s worked for me for a long time.
Jen Miller
Said this on August 29th, 2007 at 10:45pm:I did this today, and it helped in a time when my projects felt overwhelming. My first book is due on Tuesday, my grandmother broke her rib last night, and I had to deal with annoying neighbors calling the cops to ticket my car. But I made my list of four, which helped me figure out what I absolutely had to do that day, took care of it, then took care of those other little annoying things I had to do today. Great post!
Justin
Said this on August 30th, 2007 at 12:59pm:Kerri,
I attended one of the Franklin-Covey seminars a few years back myself. While I don’t use the planner any longer the way they taught and I’ve finally shed the lingo, I try to apply the basic principals when prioritizing tasks. For instance, I may not say a task is in Quadrant II, but I’ll still look at it in terms of its urgency and importance. Definitely helpful, especially on those hectic days when it feels like everything’s hittin’ ya at once.
For those who don’t know, the jist of the quadrant deal is that you evaluate tasks based on whether they’re Urgent and/or Important. An Important task is one that you HAVE to get done (though not necessarily immediately). It’s just, well, important. An Urgent task is one that’s sorta screaming in your face. It’s an attention-whore, but not necessarily an important one. Make sense?
The idea is that you try to get to a place where you’re spending most of your time on tasks that are Important, but not Urgent. Seems a little counter-intuitive at first. Most people (myself included) instinctively assume you’d want to be working on the Urgent AND Important things, but if you plan everything right, you’ll nip things in the bud before they become Urgent. Of course, things will always come up that fall outside the area you want to be in.
The A,B,C method Kerri mentioned is another method for prioritizing. You take ten minutes first thing every morning to brainstorm a list of things you need to get done, then prioritize them based on their importance for that day (like Kerri said, A’s are for that day, B’s would be nice to get done that day but aren’t essential, and C’s can be put off if necessary). After that, you prioritize within each of those categories (so A1 is top o’ the day’s list, A2 is second, etc). And, again, like Kerri said, you typically start a day’s list by carrying over the uncompleted tasks from the previous day’s agenda.
If you ever have the chance to go to one of those Franklin-Covey seminar’s (especially if your employee is paying for it), jump on it. I thought it was going to be 8 hours of some hack telling me how to use their planner so I could be a more efficient little worker bee, but it was soooo much more than that. Really, the goal of the program isn’t to improve your ability to make widgets for your slave-drivin’ boss, but to improve your own quality of life. It helps you prioritize the the important parts of your personal life, too, and makes you really think about what you want to be when you grow up, etc.
Sweet zombie Jesus, that’s a long comment… Sorry about that.