How to Prioritise Tasks as a Creative When You’re Overloaded
- Nov 10, 2025
- 6 min read
TL; DR
Creatives can overcome project overwhelm by understanding why prioritisation can be difficult and applying the right strategies to take back control of their workload.
Creatives struggle to prioritise because of task overload, the tension between creativity and deadlines, and a lack of clear direction.
Categorising your tasks in different sections of priority and deadlines can help overcome the overwhelming feeling you get when everything feels urgent and important.
Utilise different techniques to ensure you stick to your plans and perform your work efficiently.
Are you a creative who often struggles when it comes to prioritising your tasks? Does your workload feel overwhelming because everything seems to be urgent?
Well, you’re not alone.
Most creatives go through this. When there aren’t proper processes in play, prioritising can be a bit of a problem. But luckily for you, there are many solutions to solve this.
Here, we’ll break down everything you need to know about creative task prioritisation, and we’ll also list some helpful strategies for prioritising, specifically for creatives.
Table of Contents
3 Common Reasons Creatives Find Prioritising Difficult
Creatives thrive on collaboration, inspiration, and simply creating, but they often feel overwhelmed when too much happens at once. This overwhelming feeling may seem like a passing phase, but if not addressed early, it could lead to creative burnout.
But how do creatives not feel overwhelmed when they don’t know what to work on next? The answer is simple: knowing how to prioritise. But before diving into how to prioritise tasks as a creative, let us go through why creatives struggle with prioritisation.
Working on Multiple Tasks & Projects at Once
The chances of you working on more than one task as a creative are very high. You’re juggling different deadlines, revisions, and responsibilities. It’s no wonder you’re overwhelmed, and on top of that, everything needs to be addressed urgently. Without a clear system to rank what matters most, you end up reacting to whichever is the loudest rather than what is actually most important. That's where prioritisation becomes your first line of defence.
Balancing Between Being Creative and Efficient
As a creative, you’re constantly in a battle with yourself, between finding the time to come up with creative ideas and meeting deadlines. Too much stress and pressure, especially when deadlines pile up, can affect both your creativity and efficiency.
Most of the time, when creativity is under certain pressure, the ideas surface just to “fill in the blank”. They are safe, predictable, and far from your talent. That’s because creativity doesn’t run on a fixed schedule. Prioritising your tasks frees up mental space, so you are not constantly switching between creative thinking and chasing deadlines at the same time.
Lack of Focus and Direction
It’s easy for you to lose sight of what truly matters when your attention is constantly pulled in different directions. As a creative individual, you often juggle multiple ideas, projects, and responsibilities at the same time. Identifying what to tackle first can feel impossible when you have notifications with your name tagged across multiple things. The right prioritisation approach gives you that direction by helping you evaluate tasks based on urgency and impact, rather than just gut feeling or which task is the loudest.
Top 4 Task Prioritisation Strategies for Creatives
Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the best prioritisation strategies to be created. If you’re overwhelmed by deadlines and tasks to do, try this method of separating your tasks into 4 different quadrants. This helps you clearly see all your tasks and delegate, as well as remove unnecessary work that may be a distraction at the time.
This is how you can do it: Create four quadrants with various combinations of urgency and importance:
Quadrant 1: To Do
These are urgent and important tasks that have deadlines or need to be done immediately.
Quadrant 2: To Schedule
These tasks may not have deadlines, but are important.
Quadrant 3: To Delegate
These tasks need to be completed, but don’t have to be done. Immediately.
Quadrant 4: To Remove
These are distractions or tasks that aren’t important at all or can be done at a later time.
MoSCoW Method
Try out the MoSCoW method to improve your prioritisation skills. The odd capitalisation of the letters is what makes up this method, which is Must-have, Should-have, Could-have and Won’t-have. Similar to the Eisenhower Matrix, it is divided into four.
Here’s a quick breakdown to implement it:
Must-have
Mandatory tasks, and the project won’t be able to work without them. In my case, this article that you are reading is my must-have task.
Should-have
Essential to the project, but not vital, as the project can still run without it. In my case, it’d be the postings and videos that we publish for the upcoming week. It’s essential, but it can be sorted out once I’m done with my main tasks.
Could-have
Nice-to-have tasks and not necessary to the core function of a project. To compare it with my task list would be the game recordings we're planning for our social media. While not as vital as Must-haves or as essential as Should-haves, it'd be nice to add them to our social media account.
Won’t-have
You can consider this the backlog of tasks that were pushed to prioritise other tasks. Or even put in scope creeps that are added to prevent the overall timeline of a project from being disrupted.
Time Blocking
Creative tasks require deep focus, and that kind of focus is hard to manufacture on demand. Time blocking helps by giving each task its own dedicated slot in your day rather than jumping between creative and admin work. It helps you protect your attention.
The key to making it work is knowing when your brain is at its best. Everyone has different peak energy windows. Some people find that mornings are best for creative thinking, while others function better in the evenings. Understanding your own body clock is key to making time blocking work for you. Schedule your creative tasks during your high-energy hours and push administrative work to when your focus naturally starts to wind down.
Pomodoro Technique
Not every creative can sustain hours of uninterrupted focus. For those who have a shorter attention span and need more breaks in between work, the Pomodoro Technique can work wonders for you. The method is straightforward: focus for 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break after, then repeat.
What makes it effective for creatives is the structure it brings to an open-ended workday. Before you start, map out which tasks you want to tackle and roughly how many Pomodoro sessions each one might need. This stops you from drifting between tasks mid-session and gives your day a loose, workable shape.
You can also customise the lengths of each pomodoro to see what works for you. It’s all about experimentation and figuring it out through trial and error.
How Project Management Tools Help
Using project management software can be particularly helpful if you work in a team. It gives you an overview of all ongoing tasks and projects, so you can see whether you’re swamped and when you have time for other tasks.
TESSR is a great tool that can help, especially in creative workflows. Its features, such as My Work and Insights, are particularly helpful for prioritising work. You can see your own performance and progress, while supervisors and team leads can see everyone’s workload, helping with delegation and stepping in whenever a team member is overloaded.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What if my client always marks everything as urgent?
When your client always marks everything urgent, it’s essential to talk with them about the details of what they define as urgent. What they see as urgent may not be what we see.
Additionally, letting them know a realistic workflow of what your team can achieve professionally can help manage expectations.
Would task management help in prioritising my tasks?
Yes, task management would help in prioritising your tasks. In a way, prioritising your tasks is a trait in task management to better organise your responsibilities.
How do I use digital tools to improve prioritisation at work?
Task management apps like Todoist, Asana, or Notion give you a view of everything in one place, let you assign priority levels, and break large projects into manageable steps. This prevents important work from slipping through the cracks.
What are the best apps for daily task prioritisation and scheduling?
The best options are Motion and Reclaim.ai, both of which automatically schedule your tasks into your calendar based on deadlines and priorities. They act as an AI assistant, helping you navigate your day.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything, from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
Alison Chai is a marketer at TESSR, an artist, and a gaming creator with a finance background. She enjoys exploring the intersections of creative work, structure, and mental well-being. Drawn to the idea of "organised chaos”, she believes that the right systems can elevate creative expression rather than limit it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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