6 Key ways to Manage Your Workload

At any given moment, there are a million different things we could be working on. The important thing is being able to prioritize.

Sure, that may sound easier said than done, but a great place to start prioritizing is to lay everything out in front of you and use a sliding scale of four different ranks to determine which tasks that need the most of your attention. What are the four ranks, you may be thinking?

Here you go:

• Genius
• Good
• OK
• Poor 

You can probably guess that whatever has been ranked as being“poor” needs the most work, and probably the most time, whereas the project that you feel you’re a“genius” at probably needs quite a bit less of effort.

From there, we can create a clear game plan for what we need to focus on. Picture all your projects laid out before you (if it helps to do it manually with a pen and paper, go for it!), and imagine there are two axis involved in that sliding scale.

Y-Axis: How easy something will be

X-Axis: How much time it will take

Essentially, it’ll either be easy or difficult, and quick or slow.

Pick one project that you know fits into the “quick and easy” category. Next, pick one project that will probably fit more into the “difficult and slow” category.

Now… where to start?

Prioritize the quick and easy wins. This will give you momentum to keep going and move on to the more challenging projects.

Another helpful tip when trying to get those millions of projects organized and tackled is to divide them up into different segments of your business.No matter what industry you’re in or how long your business has been up and running, there will be certain parts of it that run really smoothly, and others that need some work.

Here are the 6 categories I use to divide my business activities up:

• Lead Generation
• Nurture and Build
• Conversion
• Delivery
• Return/Resell/Refer
• Backstage 

Now I want you to pause for a second and think about your own business. Which of these 6 categories are you really doing well at? Which ones need the most work?

Let’s narrow it down a bit further. Of those categories, you feel you need to work on most, which of your current projects fit into those categories?

This is a great exercise to help you identify how to best tackle projects in your business in general, not just the ones you’ve got on your plate right now. A challenge all of us face with the workload that comes with running a business is deciding where to start. Knowing how your business operates on a more foundational level will help you compartmentalize its various functions and in turn, get on top of that workload by prioritizing everything it involves.

Sometimes we’ve got to get back in the trenches just so we can dig ourselves out again, and that’s perfectly fine(despite being terrifying at times). But having a game plan to get back out is what makes everything achievable, and ultimately, worthwhile.