Managing tasks and priorities

How do you handle new tasks that come up, and choose what you spend your time on? This chart is called an Eisenhower matrix. It's a way of prioritising the things you need to do, and analysing how you spend your time. When we're busy and stressed, it can feel like it's absolutely vital that everything is done straight away.

A square with four quadrants. Clockwise from the top-left: 1 Do first, Urgent and important. 2 Schedule, Less urgent, but important. 3 Delegate, Urgent, but less important. 4 Don't do, neither urgent or important

  • Important tasks are usually aligned to your personal or professional goals. They may not give immediate results, but they will help you build the future you want. 

  • Urgent tasks need to be done in a short time-frame. 

When we are stressed out, or feeling busy, we can mistake things that are urgent for things that are important. This means we spend more time on things that don’t serve our own goals or priorities. 

When we procrastinate, we often spend our time doing things that aren't important or urgent, and then later we have to spend our time frantically working on important tasks that we could have done earlier. 

Person on laptop listening to music

If we're organised and thoughtful about how we plan our time, we can spend most of our time on things that are important to us, but that don't need to be done straight away.  

Tips for making your to-do list work for you: 

  • Colour code your to-do list with things that are important to you, like anniversaries, projects that will progress your career, or assignments for uni. 

  • Put a limit on how many important tasks you are working on at one time so you can give enough attention to each one. 

  • Put a date next to items in your to-do list, so you know when they are due. 

Habit tracking
Illustration of calendar

Building the skills and knowledge to achieve your goals takes time and ongoing effort. You wouldn't expect to get a high distinction if you never did the readings or studied for your exam, would you?  

There's good news though! If you practice building your habit consistently, it will eventually become automatic, and the more you practice a skill, the easier it gets!  

But it's not just the doing of your habits that's important, it's also how you do them. By establishing a routine, you can make it easier for your brain to work on a task. For example, if you set up a space and a time that you study consistently, your brain will start to automatically switch to study mode when that happens, making it much easier for you to get your study done. 

You can also set up rituals that help remind your brain when it's time to do a specific kind of thinking. Your rituals will help not only help get your brain started, but can also let the people you share a space with know when you're trying to concentrate. Some helpful rituals  might be: 

  • Turning off your phone 

  • Putting up (and taking down when you're done) a calendar with the assessment schedule 

  • Listening to particular music 

Time blocking

Time blocking is a time management technique where your day or week is broken into bite-sized chunks dedicated to a specific activity or task. By structuring your schedule, you turn your intentions into an actual plan to do work. 

books, checklist, pens and calendar

  1. Identify what you need to get done on a certain day or week.  

  1. Prioritise your tasks and decide how long they are likely to take 

  1. Create a block of time in your calendar for each task. 

  1. Group tasks that are similar, like checking your email or responding to messages, and dedicate a block to working on them. 

For bonus productivity: 

  • Use colour to categorise what type of task you are focusing on. 

  • Figure out when you are the most productive during the day and put the tasks that require a lot of focus at that time. 

Don’t stress about creating the perfect time-blocked schedule on your first go – you can always adjust and tweak your time blocks as needed until you find the sweet spot that works for you.  

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Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.