5 Simple Steps to Handle Tasks Effectively

Every­day we are bom­barded with numer­ous tasks.  Our plates are usu­ally over­flowed with spaghetti-ed tasks.  Some­times, far too many that we alone can cope.  How can we stay effec­tive and pro­duc­tive then with so many tasks requir­ing our atten­tion?  The answer lies in two things: that is time and pri­or­ity man­age­ment.  We know that we have lim­ited amount of time in a day.  There­fore, it’s essen­tial to fully opti­mize our­selves for full effec­tive­ness.  Fol­low­ing is the 5 sim­ple steps you can do to han­dle tasks effectively.

1. Cre­ate a Task List with the tasks that comes in your head.  Give them a pri­or­ity, the level of impor­tance, the sched­uled dates and time for exe­cu­tion and com­ple­tion.  Reg­is­ter them into the list with an ini­tial assess­ment of the impor­tance of the task first.  What­ever that comes into your mind, write it in the list.  You can fil­ter them at a later time.
2. Deter­mine the impor­tance of new tasks.  Com­pare the new task with the other exist­ing ones in the list.  Is it urgent?  Does it require your imme­di­ate atten­tion?  Is it strate­gi­cally more impor­tant to work on the new task?  Will there be implication/benefit for work­ing on the new task?  (Impli­ca­tion and ben­e­fits are sub­jec­tive to indi­vid­u­als).  Is the new task essen­tial to be com­pleted first as it is pre­de­ces­sor for sub­se­quent reward­ing tasks?  Deter­mine the impor­tance of the new task.
3. Put the new task in its right order in your Task List.   Remem­ber, it may not be worked on imme­di­ately but at least you have sched­uled to work on it at a later time.  The impor­tant thing is to set the sched­ule, get your self dis­ci­plined and fol­low the sched­ule accordingly.
4. Review your time on the tasks.  Are you spend­ing time on a task more than what you’ve planned in the Task List?  Are there implications/benefits for not com­plet­ing the cur­rent task?  Is it ok to switch task as you’ve sched­uled other tasks to focus on or is it detri­men­tal to your over­all pro­duc­tiv­ity if you switch tasks?  Re-arrange your time.   Also, re-assess your capa­bil­ity on the task such as the time taken and the out­put.  Were you con­sis­tently able to com­plete the tasks with qual­ity as per planned?  If not, is it bet­ter to put more real­is­tic tar­gets to achieve?
5. Finally, do not multi-task for utmost pri­or­ity and impor­tant task. Han­dle this task first.  You need 100% of your con­cen­tra­tion, energy and brain-power for this.  Regard this as an invest­ment of your brain-power for some­thing that can give you good rewards.  DO NOT multi-task.  Remem­ber, multi-tasking is not for every­one.  It works great maybe for your co-workers.  Or it MAY LOOK great for your co-workers but in actual fact they are not pro­duc­tive at all.  Focus on that sin­gle task with 100% concentration.

Fol­low­ing these 5 sim­ple steps not only allows you to get your things done on time and as per expec­ta­tion.  It also gets you to spend time for your­self and things that are mean­ing­ful only to you (beside plain work).  Besides, relax­ation is also a task that you should list it in the Task Lists recover your­self for future challenges.

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