Preached by virtually every time management expert (especial- ly time guru Alan Lakein) and practiced by more organization- sensitive people than any other method, the ABC system is the
“grandfather” of prioritizing strategies. In a nutshell, it says that all tasks can—and should—be given an A, B, C value:
• A tasks are those that mustbe done, and soon. When accomplished, A tasks may yield extraordinary results.
Left undone, they may generate serious, unpleasant, or disastrous consequences. Immediacy is what an A priority is all about.
• B tasks are those that shouldbe done soon. Not as press- ing as A tasks, they’re still important. They can be post- poned, but not for too long. Within a brief time, though, they can easily rise to A status.
• C tasks are those that can be put offwithout creating dire consequences. Some can linger in this category almost indefinitely. Others—especially those tied to a distant completion date—will eventually rise to A or B levels as
the deadline approaches.
There’s one additional category that you might like to use, if you feel that three are really not suffi- cient to cover all your bases:
• D tasks are those that, theoretically, don’t even need to be done.They’re rarely anchored to deadlines. They would be nice to accomplish but—realistically—could be totally ignored, with no obvious adverse or severe effects.
Strangely, though, when you attend to them (often when you have nothing better to do), they can yield surprising benefits. A few examples: reading an old magazine that turns out to contain a valuable article, buying a new read-
Time Management 30
Huh?
Perhaps the manager who wrote the following memo might like to rethink his or her prior- ities: “Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.”
ing lamp for your desk that improves your work environ- ment dramatically, browsing through a stationery store and discovering an organizational tool that will make your filing much easier, or rereading your cell phone instruc- tions to find out some wonderful functions you never knew it had.
The beauty of the ABC system is that it helps strip away the emotions we have about each task. Maybe the last thing you want to do is your expense report, but giving it an A pri- ority the night before might
be just what you need to get past your distaste for the process.
For some, even the ABC system remains too constricting. Or it spawns too many A’s or C’s. In this case, you may wish to subdivide even further: A1, A2, A3.
Applying this system to your own situation should help to give you a clearer sense of how it works. Make a list, for exam- ple, of 10 things you would ideallylike to accomplish tomorrow.
Then select from this list four items that you really expect to do, ranking them in order of importance. The first two will be A tasks and the second two B tasks. Now, from your list of 10 choose two more items that will probably be on your mind tomorrow but can be put off, if necessary. These are C tasks.
The remaining four items are most likely D tasks: nice to do but in no way pressing. You might do them tomorrow if you have nothing better to do and feel ambitious or motivated.
This little exercise can reveal clues to your behavior—both actual and ideal.
• Did the first random list reveal a logical progression of activities or how your responsibilities feel to you? What
Lining Up Your Ducks: Prioritize! 31
The ABC System in a Nutshell To summarize, here are the tasks the letters represent:
• A tasks: Critical and time-sensitive
• B tasks: Important, but slightly less time-sensitive than A Tasks
• C tasks: Not time-sensitive—yet
• D tasks: Optional—nice, but nei- ther important nor time-sensitive
does this tell you about the way you think?
• Did the A, B, C importance list produce duties in the order that you’re most likely to do them? If not, why not?
• Are you putting off an A1 priority because it’s unpleas- ant? Might it be better to do it first thing and get it out of the way?
• Will you be getting to your C priorities soon? If not, why not? Why were they on your mind? Will they soon become A’s or B’s?
• Are there any D priorities listed that you would really like to get done? Do you have a block of time soon that you could set aside for them?
• Is tomorrow a workday? If so, what personalA’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s might you have formulated if tomorrow were not a workday? How many of these would include family, friends, personal goals, or just plain loafing?
• Conversely, if tomorrow is a day for personal matters, Time Management
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What’s Important?
How do you decide the relative importance of various tasks? Below are five criteria by which you can weigh tasks when assigning them priorities:
1. High payoffs. Which tasks will provide the best return on invest- ment for your time and energy?
2. Essential to your goals. Which tasks are absolutely critical for meeting personal and professional goals?
3. Essential to your company’s goals. Which tasks will most benefit your company, providing it with the best return on investment for employing you?
4. Essential to your boss’s goals. Which tasks does your boss regard as most important?
5. Can’t be delegated. Which tasks can be done only by you? These will be high priorities.
The best time to set priorities is the afternoon or evening before—
not the morning.That way, you can sleep on your priority list and then review it in the morning.You may spot some things you want to change.
what might you have written if it were a workday?
As you ponder these questions, your responses may lead you to insights and spark the will to prioritize things differently.
You may even wish to create a personal set of criteria for decid- ing which items really belong in which categories.
The ABCs of Prioritizing
These approaches can facilitate your prioritizing:
• Label every task you list in your organizer with a letter value. An assumption: you have some sort of organizer, either electronic or paper. (More about this indispensable tool in Chapter 10.) Just doing this may prompt you to rearrange the time order of some of the things you have
“penciled in.”
• Fill out a to-do list in random order, then label each item with a rating. This list should drive your scheduling.
• Equip your desk with a three- or four-tray filing system.
Label the top tray the A tray, the next down the B tray, and so forth. Place each project, etc., in a folder and file it in the appropriate tray. (Some computer programs allow you to do this with electronic files.) Every morning, review the A’s and B’s, moving items up as needed.
Check through the C’s and D’s every Friday morning to detect tasks that you need to move up.
Lining Up Your Ducks: Prioritize! 33
Is It Critical or Urgent?
This important distinction, when assigning priorities, is a matter of time. A task is urgentwhen it must be done imme-
diately. Such a task may be less important, in the long run, than other, more critical (that is, extremely important) tasks, but its importance is magnified by the fact that it’s extremely time-sensitive. So it’s always criticalto schedule urgenttasks first, even if the importance of the task (all other things being equal) would make it a B rather than an A.