Priority Determination: How to Triage Your Day With 5-4-3-2-1

You can watch my video by clicking on the graphic below or read my thoughts beneath it:

In an earlier video, I mentioned my concept of Mind Before Minutes, 4 steps that you can take to regain control of your time. Today we’re focusing on level 1, and that is priority determination.

If you’re like a lot of us out there, there are competing priorities. So how do you know which is the highest level priority at any given time?

You could use something like the Eisenhower Matrix, where you have to decide what’s urgent or not urgent, what’s important or not important. If your brain can function in that matrix, then great, keep doing that to help you triage throughout the day. But if your brain isn’t like that, it’s okay. There is an alternative.

What you can do is use my 5-4-3-2-1 triaging. It’s very simple. You’re familiar with Google reviews, Amazon reviews and Yelp reviews, where 5 is the best and 1 is the worst. In our case with time management, a 5 is the highest level priority and a 1 is not that important. Throughout the day you can triage your email, and you can triage the questions and requests that come in digitally, in person or by phone.

A 5 means it must get done today or heads will roll. Somebody will get fired, somebody might lose custody of their child, a law might be broken. Make sure it gets done today. A 5 is not, oh, I just now thought of it.

A 4 means it’s critical, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be completed today. It can wait another day or two. A 3 means it’s important, but it can wait until the next week or the week after that.

A 2 means it’s going to be good to get it done, but it can wait maybe a month, maybe even into the next quarter. And a 1 means it’s just not that important. It’s something that could maybe even wait until the following year. A 1 is that item that stays on your to-do list for 8 months and you’re still not fired. And you know why you’re not fired? Because it’s a 1. It’s not that important.

Unfortunately, a lot of us end up working on our 1s and 2s because we haven’t paused to implement Mind Before Minutes, thinking about what is a priority we need to work on. That’s why when we work on our 1s and 2s, we feel tired at the end of the day, but we don’t feel like we accomplished anything. That’s because we didn’t work on our 5s and 4s. So today I want you to pause. Mind before minutes. Think about what are your 5s and 4s that you absolutely need to get done today and in the next few days.

Want more ways to decide what deserves your time first? Check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.