Task Manager: Here’s How to Prioritise Better
- Adilla
- Aug 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 18
It’s the middle of the week. There are so many deadlines to complete. Surely, there’s a way to deal with these tasks when every single one is urgent to do.
Table of Contents
Are You Feeling Overwhelmed by Too Many Priorities?
When everything becomes too much, take a step back and assess your tasks. It’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed when there’s a lot on your plate. Let’s pinpoint ways in which you can handle them better.
The simple way you could try is doing tasks that have the highest priority, but to you, everything is urgent and important. So, this is where prioritisation methods come in. For creatives, this might seem weird to do when the nature of your creative work is usually spontaneous.
However, when it comes to prioritising for creatives, not all techniques can work. One of the prioritisation techniques that could be used is the Eisenhower Matrix.
Urgent vs Important: The Eisenhower Matrix
Also known as the time management matrix or the Eisenhower Box, it helps you categorise your tasks into four categories:
Tasks to complete immediately
Tasks to schedule for later
Tasks to delegate to others, and
Tasks to eliminate.
To make it easier, here’s a visual representation of what each box would mean:
Urgent | Not Urgent | |
Important | Do first | Schedule for later |
Not Important | Delegate these | Delete |
With this matrix, you would know which one needs your immediate attention and which you can delegate to your team instead.
Tips To Prioritise Better for Creatives
While there are many ways to prioritise your tasks, try out these task prioritisation tips:
1. Time-Blocking and Task Batching
Besides doing prioritisation methods to go through your tasks, you could also time block your similar tasks together. Especially as a creative, when you gather all of the similar tasks in one specific time block or day, achieving a flow state would be more likely.
2. Saying No and Managing Expectations
Before accepting additional tasks, review your current to-do list. While it’s beneficial to take on opportunities that showcase your skills, it should not come at your own expense.
If you find it difficult to say “no” to new assignments, it’s perfectly acceptable to be direct and honest about your available capacity. You can also suggest alternatives, such as recommending that a colleague take on the task instead.
3 Project and Task Manager Tools to Help You Sort and Focus
Task managers or project management tools with task management features can help you not only keep track of your tasks but also assess your capacity for a given week. Here are some tool suggestions for you:
TESSR
While this is a project management tool, TESSR comes with a task management feature and is catered for creative minds. It has modules like My Work, where you can view your assigned projects even according to your priority due date, and Insights, where you can see the progress and due dates of all assigned work.
Todoist
If you prefer a less multi-use tool, Todoist fulfils the minimal requirement of task manager software. You can add descriptions, due dates, priorities, and reminders. Tasks can also be broken down into ‘subtasks’ to better view their dependencies, rather than seeing them as one large task.
FigJam
If you prefer something with more visuals and customisation, FigJam has templates and features that could give you that. It allows task organisations to visualise workflow and track progress in more of a whiteboard style.
Key Takeaways
Prioritisation is also one of the productivity tips for artists who would like a boost in their creative work, whether in terms of working faster or more effectively.
Methods like the Eisenhower Matrix, traditionally, are not made to cater to creative work because of its spontaneous nature; it is still possible to be utilised and reap its benefits.
Take advantage of task manager tools to prevent being overwhelmed by tasks.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How do I know what task to do first?
To know what task to do first, it has to be both urgent and important. Using a prioritisation technique like the Eisenhower Matrix, you would be able to start pinpointing which tasks to do first.
How do I avoid burnout from too many tasks?
To avoid burnout from too many tasks, manage your tasks efficiently and prioritise taking better care of yourself. While you are capable of taking more workload than you would, if you do this too much, you are more likely to burn yourself out faster.
So, as you manage your tasks, schedule regular breaks and establish healthy boundaries at work, too.
Are there simpler ways to manage priorities?
Besides the Eisenhower Matrix, there are simpler ways to manage priorities with your tasks. Something like the Most Important Task method. It is as simple as it sounds, as all you need to do in a given day is to list out one to three tasks in a day and complete those first before moving on to something else.
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.
Comments