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The days pass by in a glimpse of an eye. On Mongabay, you see yet another devastating story of an oil spill, massive deforestation in Indonesia, or poaching numbers rising.

At the same time, you have the feeling your days are not long enough to tackle all the biodiversity issues or those tasks that are on your desk.

Sometimes you might even feel that we are losing this battle.

Trust me, I have been there and still often get this feeling and not succeeding in managing priorities.

However, becoming better at time management prioritization helped me massively to increase my output and gave me the feeling that we still have a chance.

Why is managing priorities correctly key?

Learning the art of prioritizing is key for you as a biodiversity hero. It guarantees that you don’t get side-tracked and tackle those issues that have the biggest impact on your business/NGO.

You probably heard of the 80/20 rule. 80% of the value gets created with 20% of your work. However, when it comes to managing priorities, we rarely reflect on this and end up working on the 80%. We get sidetracked.

When you are starting alone, this is less of a problem. After all, it is quite clear what your first actions should be.

Creating a logo, building a website, getting the first customer, etc.

With time and more team members, it, however, becomes blurrier to decide what the best actions are to work on.

Sooner or later, your speed decreases, and even though you have more team members, you start to get the feeling that you are slower than when you were alone.

I use the Kanban method to double my output. I used this technique in big companies, and now where I am on my own. It is a game changer, and I am sure it will be the same for you.

What is the Kanban method?

After testing numerous approaches, the Kanban method became my favorite task management tool. It is based on the Japanese term “Kanban,” which means “visual signal” or “card.”

The concept focuses on visualizing tasks and their progress. The concept can help your team quickly identify bottlenecks, prioritize tasks, and balance workloads more effectively.

The method is very straightforward.

1. You create a board (either physical or digital. I use Notion for this).
2. You create 3 columns: To-Do, In Progress, and Done (you can obviously create more nuanced versions, but I would start with this).
3. Put all your tasks into the To-Do column.
4. Step by step, you move those cards that you are working on to the next columns.

This visualizing process allows your team members to pinpoint key areas that need to be tackled quickly. As well as potential issues that could slow down your progress in the future. This method will let your teams do twice as much work without quality or time being compromised.

This method will let your teams do twice as much work without quality or time being compromised.

What is my personal twist to boost your time management prioritization skills to the next level?

After some time, you will realize there will be plenty of tasks to do. So your team will start to struggle even with the Kanban method.

To fix this, I came up with a system that guarantees to tackle the right tasks. I judge every task by 2 criteria.

1. How big is the impact? Let’s first tackle those tasks with the biggest impact on our business or NGO.
2. How much time do we need to finish the task? Some tasks take months, so ideally, we should prioritize those tasks that present quick wins.

Ideally, you want to prioritize the following:

1. Lion tasks. High impact, low time investment
2. Leopard tasks. High impact, high time investment.
3. Cat tasks. Low impact, low time investment.
4. Nope, tasks. Low impact, high time investment.

After cross-checking each task, I label it. In my Notion database, it is then automatically sorted with Lion tasks at the top. Making sure that I always work on the tasks that increase my impact in the limited time I have.

Your turn: how do you manage priorities, including these tips?

The six steps to follow to prioritize better

Block yourself a timeslot for next week to improve your prioritization. What about Tuesday? Usually not as busy as Mondays. Then follow these next six steps:

1. Create a Kanban board. It can either be offline or online (on Notion, they have templates that make it much easier).
2. Put all the tasks that you currently have in there.
3. Use my tip to label each task or come up with your own prioritization rule.
4. Don’t freak out. You will probably realize how many mediocre tasks you and your team have worked on in the past months. Doesn’t matter. You know better now. So time to change it.
5. Make sure that the team is on board (they understand the why, they get the concept, they have the technical skills, etc.).
6. See the magic happening.

Cheat sheet to take away and tackle prioritization

In a nutshell: managing priorities is key to getting more impact done in less time.

Recommended book: Scrum.

Recommended tool: Notion.

Set up time: Depending on how many tasks & team members you currently have, from 1 hour to a couple of days with big teams.

Maintaining time: 1 hour per week.

So start doubling your impact by becoming a master of prioritization!

See you next week. Have a wild one!

Oliver

Whenever you are ready, there are 2 ways we can help you:

1. 1-to-1 business consulting. Detailed and personalized consulting to double the impact of your biodiversity organization in the shortest possible time. Not sure how good your pitch deck is?

Sign up for the waiting list by writing us at oliver@wildbusinessmates.com (unfortunately, we are booked out at the moment).

2. Wild Business Mates in Action. Wild Business Mates help you execute in areas you are struggling with. Tech, Marketing, Sales, Communication, etc. We can realize all the steps I mentioned above.