How to Prioritize Your Goals and Break Down Your Tasks

When you’re ambitious or multi-passionate, you’ve got a million-and-one goals and ideas. Nothing wrong with that, but if you don’t have a gameplan/strategy on how to go about each, it’s going to be dang near impossible to prioritize what tasks you should do by when. Without strategy, things that could be instrumental to your success can easily be overlooked, and prolong your results.

I think we all can agree that nobody has time for hiccups when they are on their grind. So how do you prioritize your goals and break down your tasks? Keep reading!

1. Be clear in what you’re working towards

Many people will say that you have to choose or that “you can’t have it all”, but we’re gonna save that speach for the losers, okay? If you have something or somethings that you are working toward, with discipline and determination, you can make them happen. Don’t let small-minded people blow out your steam or dump on your dreams.

Let’s say you want to accomplish everything below in the next 5 years:

Learn 5 new languages (1 per year) – Spanish, German, American Sign Language, French and Italian
Learn how to play musical instruments like a pro – first guitar and then piano
Learn how to do my own taxes and keep track of business taxes
Start my own business – some kind of retail store that is unique and fills a need
Volunteer more – do some church work, homeless shelters, give to charity
Become more organized so that I never miss appointments and always know where stuff is
Lose 50 pounds and get in shape like I was when I was in my 30’s

2. Create a system

When you have a lot of things that you want to accomplish, you are going to need to create a system in order to prioritize what needs to be done by when.

Tip: how I determine what needs by attention first is by breaking down each task I need to complete to achieve my goal. If you read my 3 Ways to Move the Needle Forward in Your Life blog post, then you already have the pdf’s you’ll need for this process.

After I’ve chosen my goal and deciphered what all needs to be done for me to be successful, I classify certain steps or tasks as ‘Urgent’ or ‘Important’. **Urgent means it needs to get done ASAP, important means that it is something imperative to accomplish.

Take a quick moment to write out all that you need to do (if you have no idea where to start, get this). Then mark which items are time-sensitive, i.e ‘Urgent’.

Then, from that list, determine which tasks will take you the quickest/shortest amount of time to complete.

Now out of your ‘Urgent’ tasks, which ones are going to take some time to accomplish and which ones can you knock out relatively easily? Repeat this same process for the ‘Important’ tasks.

Looking at the goals above, how would you prioritize which goals to focus on first? Then after you picked what you’d focus on first, how would you divvy out your time doing the things that will you achieve your goal?