Writing your priorities down on paper only works if you can work them off in an afternoon, but, with an ever-new stream of homework or work, many are shifted to the next day (or week or month). This Excel spreadsheet checks for deadlines and shifts priorities accordingly. In 20 minutes, the steps below provide a more effective way to manage your priorities.
Steps
Step 1. Create a "Home" or "Office" sheet
Open a new Excel spreadsheet. Right-click on the "Sheet1" tab at the bottom and select Rename. Type "Home" or "Office".
Step 2. Rename Sheet2 as "Template" and Sheet3 as "Points" by repeating step 1
Step 3. Create the "Importance" table
On the Points tab, fill in columns A, B and C:
Step 4. Define the name of the range "Importance"
Select from cell A2 to C7. Click on Insert -> Name -> Define.
Type "Importance" and click OK
Step 5. Create the "Effort" table
Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 to create the table in columns E, F and G. Select cells E2 to G6 and name them "Effort".
Step 6. Create the "Urgency" table
Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 to create the table in columns I, J and K. Call it "Urgency".
Step 7. Enter the headings on the "Home" sheet
Click on the "Home" tab and enter the headings in row 1:
- A - Priority. A formula that returns 1 for the most important task, but can go up to 100.
- B - Activities. Business name.
- C - Importance. It can take the values A, B, C, D, E or F.
- D - Effort. 1 to 5 from the Effort table.
- E - Urgency. A formula based on Fixed Date.
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F - Fixed date. Indicate when the task should be finished. These are not hard and close dates. "Advance" tells you how soon you could start the task and "Extension" tells you how many days it could slip. A haircut could have an "Advance" value of up to 5 and an "Extension" of 4 - it would make no sense to have your hair cut two weeks earlier and people might notice if it was five days old.
- G - Advance. Indicate how many days before the deadline you could start the task.
- H - Extension. Automatic extension of the set date.
- I - Remaining Days. This is a formula that specifies the number of days before the deadline; if negative, it means that the date has already passed.
- J - Activity End Date. Indicates when the task was actually completed.
- K - Comment. All the details on the task.
Step 8. Enter your list of tasks
Note that Priority, Urgency, and Days Remaining are left blank. They will be completed with formulas. Here is an example of household chores.
Step 9. Enter the formulas for Days Remaining, Urgency and Priority
The formulas below refer to line 2.
- I (Days Remaining) = F2-IF (ISBLANK (J2), TODAY (), J2)
- E (Urgency) = IF (I2> G2, 5, IF (I2> 0, 4, IF (I2 = 0, 3, IF (I2 + H2> 0, 2, 1))))
- A (Priority) = VLOOKUP (C2, Importance, 2, FALSE) + VLOOKUP (D2, Effort, 2, FALSE) + VLOOKUP (E2, Urgency, 2, FALSE)
Step 10. Change the format of cell I2 to Integer by right clicking on the cell, selecting Format and choosing Number with 0 decimal places
Step 11. Copy the formulas for Priority, Urgency and Days Remaining for the remaining cells in each column
Select cell E2 and do CTRL - C. Select cells E3 to E10 and click CTRL - V. Repeat to copy cell I2 from I3 to I10. Finally, copy cell A2 into cells A3 to A10. Ignore strange values, which appear for undefined tasks.
Step 12. Sort the rows by Priority
Select cells A1 through nK, with n corresponding to the filled rows. Then click on data sorting.
Step 13. Save your priority spreadsheet, including the date in the name to indicate the version
Step 14. Indicate the finished tasks
When you complete a task, mark the date in the Done column. Remember "CTRL -;" The CTRL key pressed together with the semicolon immediately inserts the current date.
Step 15. Look at the priorities that change every day
Here are the priorities for several days. On July 13, all activities come before the "Advance" period, so they have high numbers. On July 20, the highest priority (denoted by smaller numbers) appears for four tasks, including "Mowing the Lawn" which has passed the Set Date. On the 21st, the priority is higher because we are in the "extension" period and on July 23 it is even higher because it is beyond the "extension". "Paying the bills" also goes through an escalation on the 23rd and 25th.
Advice
- You can download a template of this spreadsheet from this link
- = IF (WEEKDAY (TODAY (), 2)> 5, TODAY () - (WEEKDAY (TODAY (), 2) -5) +7, TODAY () - (WEEKDAY (TODAY (), 2) -5))
- Sort your to-do list every day as needed.
- Divide complex tasks into partial activities.
- Feel free to change the points given to each part of the priority.
- Keep Excel files for family / home activities separate from those for work.
- Feel free to add more columns - who assigned the task, category, etc.
- Use the automatic filter to select overdue tasks (Urgency = 1) or very important tasks (Importance = "A")
- Weekly, monthly or in any case several times, the number of activities completed in each period counts. This can be positive feedback to get for your work.
- In this example, Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, Wednesday = 3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6 and Sunday = 7.
Warnings
- Save the spreadsheet every so often for backup.
- Calculated priorities are not ordinal numbers. Completing a priority "1" activity does not automatically increase the scores of all other activities. Priorities can go beyond one hundred and not all numbers are possible. Usually focus on priorities 1 to 12.
- Don't worry about having too many tasks - even two months of activity can wait at the bottom of the list, until the due date approaches.
- Time Management is strictly personal and this spreadsheet cannot accommodate all of your needs and preferences. Try not to be too demanding by visiting it every day. It may work for you, but it doesn't necessarily work for your friends or vice versa.
- Instead of always carrying Excel files with you, use Google Spreadsheet which will always be at your disposal.
