How To Set Priorities On The Road To Accountability

By Darren Finkelstein
By Darren Finkelstein

The Accountability Guy®

Home » Accountability » How To Set Priorities On The Road To Accountability
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Once you decide that you are going to act on your goals and plans, you are 25% on the road to achieving them. When you prioritize your decisions and identify which are urgent and vital, you are 45% on the way to achieving your goals. However, you must be wondering how to prioritize your goals, isn’t it?

This blog will help you understand how to prioritize your goals. You’ll get useful tips to sort through your decisions and understand what is important to you. Plus, you’ll know how to create your to-do list and set due dates to ensure you achieve your goals.

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Setting Priorities

Setting your priorities while trying to achieve goals is important to ensure you can identify what is important amidst the plethora of tasks. It will become easier for you to hold yourself accountable when you know your priority.

You might wonder how to set your priorities. Following these tips will help you in setting your priorities:

Create and Manage Your To-Do List

While setting your priorities, you need first to create your to-do list. You’ll know your to-do list when you know what goals you need to achieve.

Your to-do list will comprise all the tasks, goals, and nitty-gritty you need to achieve while working in an organization. You can create your to-do list either on pen and paper or use sophisticated software too.

When creating your to-do list, you have to ensure you list your short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals properly to ensure you get the big picture. Plus, having a list lets you tick them off as you do them and gives you a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

Set Deadlines

Once you create to-do lists, it’s imperative you set deadlines for each of your tasks. Only when you set deadlines for your tasks will you have sufficient motivation to achieve your goals. It will help you build momentum to achieve your goals when you set deadlines or due dates for your tasks.

When you have deadlines for your tasks, you’re able to strategize better and ensure you hold yourself accountable for achieving your goals, dreams, and desires. They ensure you’re energetic and work with gusto and vigour to achieve your goals and get things done.

You may find deadlines and due dates tiresome; however, they motivate you and push you to actually do your tasks. Without deadlines, you’ll probably get lethargic and not achieve your goals. So, deadlines will make your tasks more relevant and achievable. They give you something to work towards and ensure you remain enthusiastic about your goals and plans.

Assess What Works for You

One of the tricks to setting priorities is to check what works for you. Assessing what works for you includes the following:

  • Identifying – You need to determine what are your urgent and vital tasks. You’ll need to ensure you do the urgent and essential tasks immediately. You can delay important but not urgent tasks and delegate urgent but unimportant tasks. Tasks that are unimportant and not urgent you can delete.
  • Clarifying – Then you can clarify and verify according to your schedule what you can achieve when. You’ll be able to set deadlines correctly and ensure you achieve your goals and tasks according to the organizational requirement.
  • Organizing- You might want to rank your tasks according to priorities to ensure you achieve the most critical tasks quickly. Plus, you’ll understand what tasks are more important and accordingly start work on them.

Sort Through Your To-Do List

Once you assess what works for you and have created a coherent to-do list with the big-picture in front of you, sort your list. While sorting through your list, you must analyze and start placing your tasks in order.

You place your tasks in order of importance and urgency. All the tasks you need to do immediately form the top of your list. Your delegate tasks come next, and then the ones you can delay. You can delete some tasks from your list altogether.

When you sort your list, you have clarity on what you need to do and in what order to ensure you can optimally achieve your goals and aspirations.

Endnotes

So, while making decisions, it’s important to prioritize. You cannot realistically sit and do everything to achieve your organizational goals. You need to create a to-do list, sort through it and prioritize tasks that are urgent and important. Accordingly, you decide what to do, delegate, do later, or delete.

Further, it is vital to decide when you will do your tasks. Only when you set a deadline will you have sufficient motivation to achieve your decisions and dreams.

If you’re unable to decide what to prioritize to reach your goals and pave the way to accountability, you can consult an accountability coach like TickThoseBoxes. They will help you create your to-do list and sort through it.