How to prioritize tasks: 5 methods that work

You can't prioritise what you can't see. Put every task in one place, one per line or one per card, including the small ones and the ones you've been avoiding. Then cross off anything that no longer needs doing. That alone usually shortens the list by a fifth.

Sort each task by 2 questions: is it urgent, and is it important?

• Urgent and important: do it now.
• Important, not urgent: schedule it. This is where most valuable work lives, and what gets squeezed out.
• Urgent, not important: hand it to someone else if you can, or do it quickly.
• Neither: drop it.

Use it for: a personal list, or a crowded week. It takes minutes. The Eisenhower matrix template sets the 4 answers up as columns.

Label each item for a release or project as Must have, Should have, Could have or Won't have this time. Musts are what the release fails without. Won'ts are agreed out of scope, which is as useful as agreeing what's in.

Use it for: scoping a project or release with other people. Keep the Musts to a minority, or the labels stop meaning anything. Start from the MoSCoW template.

Rate each task for the value it brings and the effort it takes, roughly, then place it on a 2 by 2 grid:

• High value, low effort: quick wins. Do these first.
• High value, high effort: big bets. Plan them and break them into smaller cards.
• Low value, low effort: fill-ins for spare moments.
• Low value, high effort: drop them.

Use it for: a team backlog, in a short session where everyone rates together. The impact effort matrix template has a column for each group.

Score each item as reach times impact times confidence, divided by effort:

• Reach: how many people it affects in a period.
• Impact: how much it affects each of them, on a small scale such as 1 to 3.
• Confidence: how sure you are of the other numbers, as a percentage.
• Effort: how much work it takes, for example in person-weeks.

Sort by score, highest first. The method was popularised by the product team at Intercom.

Use it for: a product backlog where opinions clash and you want the reasoning in the open. It's too heavy for a personal to-do list.

Each morning, do the task you're most likely to put off first, before email and before anything easier. The name comes from the idea that if you eat a frog first thing, nothing worse will happen for the rest of the day.

Use it for: your own day, when the problem isn't choosing but starting.

• One order, not one label. A list where everything is "high" has no priorities. Rank tasks first, second, third.
• Limit what's in progress. Priorities only matter if you finish things in that order. Starting 6 at once undoes the ranking.
• Re-sort on a rhythm. Weekly for a team, daily for yourself. Not every time something new arrives.
• Swap, don't stack. When something urgent comes in, decide what it replaces.

A kanban board turns a priority list into an order you can see. In craaft:

• The top of To Do is what's next. Drag cards into the order you decided.
• Give the few cards that really must jump the queue a high or urgent priority, and a due date only when the date is real.
• Put a WIP limit on Doing so you finish in order, like in the task tracker template.
• Focus lists what's overdue and due this week across every board, plus high-priority cards with no date.