📊 How do you set priorities?
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One thing I keep struggling with is prioritizing.
There are always too many things that feel important.
And I think solo makers have the same problem as teams - just with all the voices in the head =D
In a team everyone can have a different priority, the designer might want to polish the UI, developers want to fix backend issues, marketing wants to improve the landing page...
So how do you decide what comes first?
Do you have a strategy, use any tools or data, or mostly go with your gut feeling?
What's your approach?
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I always have a lot of ideas that I want to try, and prioritizing them has long been a problem for me. Now I have a weird but useful solution: the only priority is the deadline. XD
Here’s why: No matter what you do, if something is approaching its deadline, you have to do it first. I procrastinate, and I think all humans do. This actually led me to discover that I can finish something quickly when the deadline is approaching, because I simply don’t start until time is about to run out—like finishing homework within two days. The amazing thing I found is that I am more focused and my potential is activated in this situation. I’ve tried this before: I played games with my friends in the first few days, then focused during the last two or three days to finish my assignment, and it worked well. The only thing to worry about is whether you can handle the anxiety while you’re playing instead of working.
That’s also an example of how interesting things always occupy your mind. You may have other work to do, but some specific task is the one you want to do most. Instead of doing the others first, you’d better do this one first, or you will keep thinking about it and may never actually start.
In short, just consider urgency and interest. If a task is urgent, do it. If it's not urgent but more interesting, do it. If it's neither urgent nor interesting, do something else.
RunEvr
@mindyorzi Thanks for your detailed answer!
I agree with you about tasks that occupy your mind =)
But for urgency and deadlines, I still have the same question: how do you prioritize which task should get a deadline in the first place? How do you decide what’s really urgent?
Sometimes all the tasks are so closely related that it’s difficult to figure out which one should come first.
@adana Maybe if you can't figure out what's more urgent, just randomly pick one and do it. If you feel it's not the right one, switch to another？
I think in this case, since you need to finish both, there's no need to identify which one is more urgent. Actually, even if you set deadlines for all the tasks, not all of them will be finished on time. Planning sometimes can cost more time than actually doing the work. Hope I understood your question correctly ：）