17 Steps to help you set Priorities for your Startup/Small Business
“Always concentrate on the most valuable use of your time. This is what separates the winners from the losers – the failures from the successful” – Wiz4.biz
Priorities Topics: Your Life, Vision, Important, Value, Growth, Daily, Time, Monitor, Reflect, Small Steps & Wins, Perfectionism, Respond, Honest, Mentors, Distractions,
Your Life. When you think about how you want to live your life, what exactly comes to mind? Do you see yourself traveling the world, building your own business, etc? However you choose to live your life, will most likely be determined by how you set your priorities. When you want to make changes to your life, it’s important to know what’s most valuable to you. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to figure this out when you’re always in the fast lane and you start to lose focus on what you originally wanted in the first place.
Why? We all live such busy lives these days and it makes it challenging to do everything on our To-Do list. To make sure you’re able to focus on your priorities, it’s important you ask yourself the ‘why’ behind everything you do. Once you have a deeper understanding of ‘why’ something is important to you, it makes it easier to follow through with getting it done. You may even find that, once you discover your ‘why’, that your priorities have changed.
Me, Me, Me. So, how do you figure out what’s most important – so you can set your priorities? It begins with you. You must commit to making time for yourself. Getting caught up in the details of life can cloud your vision around what’s most important to you. Even taking short amounts of timeto breath, relax, walk, process & plan, will help you to reduce the clutter and see more clearly what you may have been missing before. If you want to get a clear picture of where you want your life to head, here are 17 ways you can figure out how you want to take charge of your life by setting your priorities straight.
1. How do you want to Live your Life?
Do you want to work only a certain amount of hours per week, but your current business prevents you from doing that, then finding alternatives should take precedent on your to-do list. (ie, getting more staff, delegating, etc) It’s important to have your priorities straight so you’re living the life you want – with purpose & fulfillment that feels good for you.
2. Detail your short & long-term Vision
It’s time to put your thoughts into action. Take a few moments to create a plan of where you would like to see yourself in the next couple of months, years. Align those dreams with your priorities – to help you focus on making your wishes come true.
3. Figure Out what’s Most Important to You
Before you can set your priorities, you need to figure out exactly what they are. How do you expect to kill it in the biz, when you have no idea what your goals are? You have limited time & energy, so you need to determine what your top priorities are at any given moment.
4. Figure out what is important to ur Biz
What are the company’s core business activities? What is the company’s long-term objective? The answers to those questions should drive your company’s Priority-setting process. Set Goals that will determine the tasks that need to be done – which will align with the company’s long-term goals and strengthen the company’s operational activities.
5. Assess the Value of each Task
Completing certain tasks will offer more benefit than others. (ie, paid Client work comes before internal work)
6. Focus on what will drive Growth
Once you have outlined what is important to your company, focus mainly on what activities are making the company grow. Once you have identified & categorized them, take time to help everyone involved understand the “BiG-Picture Goals and how they are going to help achieve them, so they know what’s most important.
7. then Determine your Daily Tasks
Have you ever felt so motivated to make a change in your life, but in just a few days, you retreated back to your old habits? Prevent this by planning out what you need to do every day to keep you motivated and focused. Estimate the time required for each task and determine what you can do each day to stay on track.
8. Allocate specific Time Slots for Tasks
You will realize you can get a lot accomplished – once you designate an actual time in your schedule for a task. It’s important to remember to set time aside for things that truly matter to you – priorities. Whatever it is, you won’t feel fulfilled if you constantly put other things before your priorities. You’ll feel guilty.
9. Monitor your Priorities
How are you doing vs your expectations? Are your priorities are still serving you? Are you holding yourself accountable to living the life you want to? Set aside a regular time to do this – at the end of the week, month.
10. Take a Break, take Time to Reflect
When things seem to be getting out of hand, take time away from your work environment – where you shut off your phone, put pen to paper and tell yourself that, even though you have a million things going on, this is a priority. Analyze your priorities and figure out what kind of changes you need to make. If you feel like you have no time to do this, then honestly, that’s even more of a reason for you to reflect.
11. Take Action In Small Steps
If you start to feel overwhelmed with your priorities, take a short break to clear your mind. You don’t need to be Super Man or Wonder Woman to set your priorities straight. The only person you need to make happy is yourself, and the more you realize that, the better you may feel. We can’t do everything, all of the time, but we can take committed action in small steps and build on them from there.
12. Celebrate the small Wins, then move on to the next Priority
Regardless of how hard you try, many people still sit back and wait for someone else to go first in creating new “mission-critical” Priorities. It is essential to create “momentum”, by celebrating small or early successes. Establish a mindset of challenging the “status quo”, running a rapid execution and capturing the lessons of successes or failure as the way to accelerate action for the next priority.
13. Don’t pursue Perfectionism
When something is really important, it’s easy to get caught up in the details and end up spending way too much time on the task. Spending too much time on one priority, however, prevents you from doing the other priorities. Recognize when you’re doing this and enforce strict deadlines to prevent yourself from killing clock.
14. Respond to changing Situations
As your company is in business or as you get older, your priorities will most likely change. Consider the fact that over time you mature (hopefully) and you need to just re-prioritize what’s most important to you. Some priorities will be ones that we focus on over the long term and other priorities will be focused on what’s happening now.
15. Be Honest with Yourself
You have to check your priorities against reality. Keep track of how much time you truly spend on things each week, for at least a week. Be honest with yourself. Compare the reality of your time with your really important Priorities that you should be doing. Are you giving proper time to what matters most? If not, why not? What can you do to make your true priorities #1 in your life? Make appropriate changes so your reality matches what really matters most to you.
16. Get & use a Mentors . . .
that can open your eyes to problems you may have never noticed. They might help you see things from a different perspective and challenge you to focus on what needs to be #1 in your life. If you’re not sure what is most important, share with a Mentor as well as friends. They may be able to help you not only in terms of practicality, but also judge the sense of urgency & emotion you show..
17. Significantly reduce or eliminate Distractions
If you want to do your priorities, you need to get rid of many, most, all distractions (ie, Social Media, Email). Turn off the Radio, TV & your Phone. It’s time to focus on your priorities & shut down the distractions. Not only set aside time on your schedule to do your priorities, but also “free” time to do the distractions. Divide & Conquer !!!
Comments: Do you know any other ways to help you set Priorities?
from Hustle Bustle, Inc & Medium 6/19 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz
For more Info, click on Priorities.