Do you know how to manage your competing priorities so that you can get everything done?
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As you may know, adulting can require that you juggle a myriad of priorities. There are times when these priorities compete for the lion’s share of your time and energy.
As a grad student, full-time school leader, and long-distance caretaker I have had my share of moments where I’ve felt overwhelmed because of the competing priorities I had to manage. Whether you are a student, parent, professional, or all three you can use these tips to help you master adulting when everything seems important.
In this post, I will detail 5 techniques I learned to help manage competing priorities for optimal adulting.
In 2021 I was in grad school, working full-time, and helping my sister with my mom as a long-distance caretaker. There was so much important to me that I often felt like I was inadequate to address it all. Reflecting on this time, I have regrets and appreciation for how I handled what I went through. From this experience, I learned several techniques that helped me to manage my life when everything seemed important.
Disclaimer
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How to deal with competing Priorities
1) Know Your Values
The first step to managing your priorities is to know what you value now, in 5 years, and 10 years. For example, you may value your career today, while you may value relationships 10 years later. Consider what you value now and what you may value in the future. Knowing this can help guide your decision-making in a macro sense and throughout the day-to-day. Have you heard the saying, that the decisions you make today will impact your future? That also rings true for your priorities. What you prioritize today will shape your future. Knowing what is important will serve as a filter through which you can weed out responsibilities misaligned with your values. There are moments when life happens and things that are not usually a priority comes first. For example, if your car needs repair so that you can get back and forth to work, transportation becomes a significant priority for a period. Overall your values should consistently guide your priorities.
At the top of each year, along with writing down my goals for the year, I also find it helpful to review the values that I have written down in the past. If necessary, I will edit them to match what I am aiming to do in this season of my life. Your goals and values are two sides of the same coin. I like to think of my goals as the actions that demonstrate my values or the actionable extensions of my values. Everything I do comes from what I value. Take some time to think about what is important to you. Then write your values down so that you can refer back to them in the future.
2) Plan & Work Ahead
An amazing way to manage competing priorities is to plan ahead and work ahead. Having a lot on your plate and consistently having too much to do can be managed by consistent forethought and working ahead. Think about your schedule a week from now, a month from now, and three months from now. What will be due? Do you have any appointments and meetings that you will need to keep? Begin planning for these deadlines and appointments ahead of time! Check out my time management activity book that walks you through several activities to help you plan your week in 60 minutes. This activity book is a great option for those looking to get started with planning their schedule or those looking for a way to improve their planning to make it more efficient and tailored to your style of time and task management. I go through 7 activities in this book and share 2 critical frameworks for planning your week.
If you have a large project that is due in three months, don’t wait until the month that it is due to start thinking about it. When you wait the work, energy, and attention to accomplish your project has to be concentrated within the limits of a shorter time frame along with any other priorities you must attend to during that time. Developing a plan to address your priorities consistently over a longer period frees your time and energy spread across other responsibilities you may have. Still, there are moments when life can seem overwhelming and there is too much to do with very little time. Check out the article below for more details on prioritizing in moments like this.
{Related Post: 8 Things to Do When You Have Too Much to Do}
3) Use Gig Eco Services to Delegate Your Tasks
Using gig eco-services to delegate some of your responsibilities can be a real lifesaver. If you have the resources and you need to free some time and energy, outsource your tasks. Common things that you can outsource are laundry, house cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, and car maintenance. These tasks can be a huge time suck. There are apps for just about every task listed above. When I lived in New York, I used a laundry service to wash and fold my clothes. I had so many other competing priorities, this service was a lifesaver. While it was less expensive for me to wash my clothes, having an extra 3 hours over the weekend was much more valuable. Even if you don’t use a service regularly, think about keeping a few in your back pocket to reference.
Think about your competing priorities and day-to-day needs. If you have to wash clothes for your family, edit a midterm, and turn in a project for work it may be worthwhile to hire a service to wash your clothes. If you anticipate that your attention will need to be given to several different priorities over the next few weeks, try to plan ways you can enlist these services to broker your time and attention for other priorities.
4) Evaluate your Priorities using the Eisenhower Matrix
Important things first and the non-important and non-urgent things last. Use the Eisenhower matrix to help evaluate if the things you are spending your time on are high priority. Allow your values to help you determine what is important for you. This Matrix helps you to identify tasks that need to be addressed expeditiously versus those that can be considered with more time. It also helps you to reveal any to-do’s that feel and seem important but are not aligned to your values. Check out the example in this blog post for a more detailed overview of the Eisenhower matrix.
5) Goal Setting and Habit Building
Along with planning ahead, goal setting and habit building will help you develop the ability to manage multiple priorities at once. At the start of each year, I develop goals that I want to achieve through the consistent implementation of certain habits. Your goals should directly reflect your habits. If that is true, then the habits you foster will help you to manage your priorities throughout the year. For example, if you want to grow in your career, your goal may be to make all 5 on your EOY evaluation at your job. A habit that will help you meet that goal is to answer all work emails within 24 hours of receipt. As you plan your schedule throughout the week, you will dedicate targeted time each day to review and respond to emails. While you may have another goal to spend more time with family, so you aim to spend 2 hours a week with friends and family in person. As you plan your week you schedule time to visit with family.
To learn more about surefire ways to achieve your goals check out the blog post here. Additionally, the book Atomic Habit conceptualizes what it means to build habits that help you to make the strides to accomplish your aspirations.
{Related Post: 7 Steps to Achieve What You Want in Life}
This post describes the techniques and tactics I used to manage competing priorities.
