Hello, that’s the first video from series “Work more productive” about setting up priorities and saving up some time.

Why setting up priorities is important?

 

Therese Macan, the author of great research about productivity, says that the most important part of time management is setting up priorities.

Priorities are tasks, which are most important for you because they give you the most valuable results. There are also the hardest and the most demanding work.

You have to know, which tasks from your to-do list are most valuable for you.

Having daily priorities boosts your efficiency and increases the level of energy.

The decision about choosing your priorities every day, make planning a lot easier.

 

How to set up priorities.

 

If you don’t know which tasks supposed to be your priorities, you can ask yourself this three questions:

 

1.Which of my tasks have the biggest value for my job?

2.Which action will bring me closer to my key goal?

3.Am I sure that after finishing this priority the rest of my tasks will be easier?

 

Next advice

 

  • Reserve time for all things that are important to you. If you admit that the most important task for you is music production or playing guitar, then you have to find time for that.
  • Ask this question one more time —->Which task on this stage bring me closer to my goal? When my goal is to mix the whole album, then I set up proper priorities. To be closer, I have to spend at least one hour on mixing one of the tracks. When I have daily priority task, I know exactly which track I should mix and what exactly I need to change there.
  • Instead of setting up priorities in a general way like “produce something,” it’s better to decide on something clearly defined, for example: “Today I start producing a new track in scale C-minor, and I record the main theme on synth lead.” But it’s not about limiting yourself because scale and sound you can always change. This just guarantees that you will be prepared for working and start it more easily.
  • If you can’t find time during a day for producing a whole track, then you should set up only one little thing you can do, for example, “I produce drums part for the newest production.”
  • In the mix is the same. If we know that we will not have enough time for mixing the whole track, your priorities can sound like “I will only mix drums or only automated vocal gain.”
  • Just the beginning of working on your priority may create an opportunity and motivate you to work longer and more efficiently.
  • It’s worth considering doing your priorities early in the morning because in the morning we have a high possibility of working without any distractions.
  • Remember, prepare your three most important task right before you go to sleep or at least early in the morning. This helps you to have a fresh start every day and know exactly what you should do.
  • In the beginning, it’s of great importance to have a reminder that can inform you before you go to sleep that there’s still one task to do – setting up three priorities for the next day. After some time writing down your three most important tasks become a habit and you won’t need the reminder anymore.

 

Where to save your priorities.

 

Notebook

Writing everything in your notebook gives you a possibility of analyzing all task that you finished in the last week. Thanks to that, we can notice our progress, and we also can have all our notes with us everywhere.

 

Apps (To-do)

For me, one of the fastest ways of writing down and saving my priorities is the app To-doist. You just need to download this for your phone and then you have free access to it whenever you are.

 

Virtual Notebook

The virtual notebook has one significant advantage over the To-Do app. It serves a possibility of finding you old notes and analyzing them. I recommend using Evernote as a virtual notebook.

I’m using a standard notebook to write down all my priorities for the next day.

All tasks that aren’t priorities go straight to To-doist. Virtual notebook helps me to save and organize all my ideas that I come up with in different places. I also have there all my clients notes etc.


Which are your ways to be more productive? Please write in a comment!

Let’s do something together and start working more productive!

Tomek 🙂