New Project Priority Model

How do you manage projects, priorities and time?

There are a lot of ways to look at this, however yesterday I came up with an interesting model that you may find useful.

One of the biggest issues we have as Independent Professionals is actually getting around to doing certain marketing activities. Some things that we want to do, we simply never get around to.

And it often seems that there are so many things to do that it's easy to get overwhelmed and start procrastinating, not knowing where to start or what to do. We're left missing a lot of opportunities to take our businesses to new places.

So here's my new Project Priority Model:

Take a piece of paper and place it horizontally. Create three columns on the page and title the columns as following:

Far Left Column - Like to Do and Engage In

Far Right Column - Don't Like to Do and Avoid

Middle Column - Delegate or Defer

OK, so in the left column, write down all the things in your business that you not only enjoy doing but also get around to doing. This might be things like working with clients, writing your eZine, web site work, and social media.

Now in the right column, write down all the things you don't enjoy doing and tend to avoid. This might be things like speaking, making follow-up calls, public relations and bookkeeping.

Finally, in the middle column, write down all the things you are already delegating (perhaps to a virtual assistant or other service provider.) This might include some administrative work and customer service emails.

This represents where you are right now.

Now your job is to re-configure the columns.

In the left column you only want things that are high priority tasks or projects that you can't see any way to delegate right now. But you also want to notice any things that you could actually delegate such as web site work.

Move all those delegable items to the middle column and circle all those items.

Next look at the right column listing all the things you don't enjoy. You can do three things with the items in this list. You can delegate them, defer them or learn to like them.

You don't really like bookkeeping but you tend to do it anyway. Not a great use of your time. So move that to the middle column and put a circle around it.

You don't like doing PR, but you really don't see it as a major priority. This is something you can defer (maybe temporarily, perhaps forever). Move it to the middle column and circle it.

You also don't like speaking, but you know it would be a great strategy to grow your business. You can't really delegate it and you don't think you can defer it. So this one gets moved to the left column with a circle around it.

Now you have quite a different chart, unlike the one you started with.

In the left column you have the activities you like to do and you can't delegate and also a few that you need to get better at.

In the middle column you now have a few new things to delegate. The things to defer, you don't have to worry about for now.

And in the third column you have - nothing! It's all been delegated, deferred on been assigned to work on.

Now what do you do?

Well, you may have a number of new things to delegate that are circled in the middle column. You may need to find a virtual assistant or another service provider to do those things for you. You create simple plans to make those happen.

The left column is a little more problematic. Sure, you have a number of things on that list that you like to do, and are already doing, so no problem.

But you also have a number of things you don't like and are avoiding. Now you've isolated these things by circling them. It's no longer overwhelming; you can work on them one at a time.

So for instance, you take speaking and make a project out of it. There's a lot of things you could do. They might include the following:

- Make a list of speaking topics
- Buy a book on giving presentations
- Outline a talk on Powerpoint
- Hire a speaking coach
- Contact organizations for speaking opportunities
- Put together a "speaker's package"
- Work on your negative beliefs about speaking

That's just a start, but you get the idea. If you take this on as a project, not just a to-do, you'll find all sorts of ways to approach speaking until you start to make some positive headway.

By the way, what I transferred from my Avoid List was:

Study Time (books and recordings) - I never seem to find the time for this, but now that I've isolated it, I'll put together a project to make it happen.

Follow-Up Calls and Emails - Like almost everyone else, I tend to procrastinate about these. This is one where taking a serious look at my fears and beliefs will likely yield results.

Delegation - Not my strongest suit. And I need to make this a project so that I'll actually delegate some of the things on the delegation list.

Now that I have my list, I can put most of my time attention on the high-priority things I like to do, save some time by delegating things another could do, and zeroing in on a few things were I need to brush up on my skills while confronting my resistance.

I'm now starting to wonder what things will be like when all my priorities are straight and I'm on track most of the time!

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Get past the standard A, B and C priority system; it really doesn't work in my experience. You need to find a way to do what you love (as well as loving what you do), delegate what you can and forget the rest.

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