How To Use Daylite To Focus on The Right Tasks

Quick Tips / March 10, 2014 / Kristie

Making the most use out of your time is all about balancing your priorities. While everyone’s tasks are different even if you’re working in a similar industry, the types of tasks that we are faced with are similar, and can be broken down into 4 different quadrants according to Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. Stephen Covey, author of First Things First and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, explains how to use this Time Management Matrix to assess your tasks in order to appropriately allocate your time each day.

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Analyzing Your Productivity

It’s suggested that you list all the big and small tasks that you complete on a regular basis (as well as occasional tasks that pop up). After writing down all your tasks, starts assessing which quadrant each of them belongs in. After breaking up your tasks into each quadrant, have a look at which quadrant you spend most of your day working in. Are you mainly working on things that are important or unimportant? Try to prioritize your tasks so that you put the most emphasis on things are are important, and work towards minimizing or eliminating as many tasks as possible that are unimportant. Once you’ve established your priorities, it’s easier to maintain a productive workflow because you are more able to recognize tasks that are disruptive, and place less importance on them.

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Where to Focus Your Time

The goal is to spend the majority of your time in quadrant #2 completing tasks that are important but not urgent, and the least amount of your time doing tasks that are not important and not urgent. By completing tasks that are important and not urgent, you’re able to focus on tasks that bring you towards your goals, while taking the time to complete these tasks properly the first time. On the other side of the spectrum, if you spend a lot of time doing tasks that are unimportant and urgent, this is mainly a waste of time that does not bring you any closer to your goals. The direction is lost and you’re rushing to fix things that don’t move your company forward.

Taking Advantage of Daylite

Daylite supports this theory of prioritizing your most imprints tasks and keeping your focus on the main goal ahead. By using pipelines to direct your attention on the end result, and your task list to prioritize the bits and pieces that bring you closer to your goal, you’re able to accomplish meaningful work and maintain a high level of productivity. Some Daylite users live by the theory that if a task is not directly linked to a project or opportunity, it’s a waste of time because it is not directly inline with the goals of the company. Another way to use Daylite to support this theory is by categorizing tasks by ‘important- urgent’ , ‘unimportant-not urgent’ , etc.
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You can then prioritize your tasks by category, adding the important ones to your worklist first. This way you are able to focus on your tasks by urgency and importance visually, while maintaining a habit to assess your tasks.

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If you already have a category assigned to a task, using a keyword is another alternative. You can tag your tasks with the same keywords as categories (important-urgent). The difference is that you can apply multiple keywords to an object, while objects can only have one category assigned to them. This process of organizing your tasks will support an ongoing habit of an efficient workflow and result in an increase in productivity.

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