Quotes about Prioritization

You're able to love others, to give to others, and do for others by giving and doing for yourself first.

One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.

The law of increasing returns says that the more you focus on doing the few things that represent the most valuable use of your time, the better you become at those activities and the less time it takes you to accomplish each one.

Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.

The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.

Apply the 80/ 20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent.

Focus on key result areas: Identify those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.

Apply the Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life.

Go through your life regularly and practice "creative abandonment": Consciously determine the activities that you are going to discontinue so that you have more time to spend on those tasks that can really make a difference to your future.

Make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. Set aside thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-minute time segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks. Many highly productive people schedule specific activities in preplanned time slots all day long. These people build their work lives around accomplishing key tasks one at a time.

What are your highest value activities? What can you, and only you do, that if done well, can make a real difference?

It takes only about 10 to 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you up to two hours (100 to 120 minutes) in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.