How to set priorities
Setting priorities means deciding what gets your time first, what waits and what doesn’t get done at all. The basic method is the same whatever tool you use: write down everything on your plate, judge each item by how important it is and how urgent it is, do the important things first, schedule time for them, and delegate or drop the rest.
The entrepreneur and coach Eric Partaker collected nine of the best-known prioritisation tools in one graphic, aimed at the moment “when your plate is too full” [1]. He splits them into three for individuals, three for teams and three for leaders. This guide explains how each works, where it comes from and when to use it.
Prioritisation tools for individuals
The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix sorts tasks on two questions: is it important, and is it urgent? That gives four boxes [1][2]:
| Urgent | Not urgent | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | Do it now | Schedule it |
| Not important | Delegate it | Delete it |
It is named after a quote attributed to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Eisenhower himself credited the idea to an unnamed former college president [2]. The matrix is most useful when everything feels urgent, because it forces you to separate pressure from importance. The “schedule it” box is where most valuable work sits and where it most often gets squeezed out.
The 3-3-3 method
Partaker credits this to Oliver Burkeman, the British author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals [1][3]. Each day you plan three hours of deep work on your most important project, three urgent tasks (meetings, emails, deadlines) and three maintenance tasks that keep life running smoothly [1]. It works because it caps the list: nine things is achievable, and it guarantees the big project gets time every day.
Time blocking
Time blocking means giving each task its own slot in your calendar and working only on that task during the slot [1]. A typical day might have focused work from 9 to 12, a break, an hour of urgent tasks, exercise, other tasks and then calls and emails at the end of the day [1]. The graphic credits the idea to the authors Cal Newport and Nir Eyal [1]. It is closely related to timeboxing, which sets a fixed maximum time for an activity and is used in agile project management [4]. A useful side effect is that it shows you honestly how much fits into a day.
Prioritisation tools for teams
Partaker’s advice before using any team tool is to make sure the team has clear goals and to gather every task in one place [1].
The ABCDE method
Credited to the self-development author Brian Tracy, writer of Eat That Frog!, the ABCDE method ranks tasks by the consequences of not doing them [1][5]:
- A: must do today; serious consequences if not done.
- B: should do today; minor consequences if not done.
- C: nice to do; no real consequences.
- D: delegate if you can.
- E: eliminate.
The point is to finish the A tasks before anything else, and to be honest about how many tasks really belong in A.
The MoSCoW method
MoSCoW sorts work into Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have (this time) [1]. Dai Clegg developed it in 1994 for rapid application development, and it spread widely with the Dynamic Systems Development Method from 2002 [6]. In projects with a fixed deadline, the Could and then Should items are the first to go if time runs short, which makes it good for agreeing scope with clients and stakeholders [6].
Kanban boards
A Kanban board shows work in columns, usually To Do, Doing and Done, so the whole team can see what is in progress and what is next [1]. Kanban was developed at Toyota by the industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno to improve manufacturing; the name comes from the cards used to track production [7]. Teams often add a limit on how many items can be in “Doing” at once, which stops people starting too much and finishing too little.
Prioritisation tools for leaders
For leaders, Partaker’s point is focus: know your top goals and avoid doing too much [1].
The 25/5 rule
Write down your top 25 goals or projects, rank them, commit to the top five and actively ignore the other 20 [1]. The story is widely attributed to Warren Buffett, but we could not find a first-hand source for it, so treat the attribution with caution. The idea holds up either way: the goals ranked six to 25 are the ones most likely to distract you from the top five.
The Pareto principle (80/20 rule)
The Pareto principle says that for many outcomes roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes [8]. The management consultant Joseph Juran developed the idea in 1941, naming it after the economist Vilfredo Pareto [8]. Applied to priorities, it means finding the small number of tasks, customers or products that produce most of the value and putting your effort there [1]. It is a pattern, not a law, so the split is rarely exactly 80 and 20 [8].
The theory of constraints
Eliyahu Goldratt introduced the theory of constraints in his 1984 business novel The Goal [9]. Every system has one bottleneck that limits its output, so improving anything else achieves little. Goldratt’s five focusing steps are to identify the constraint, decide how to exploit it, subordinate everything else to that decision, elevate the constraint, and then repeat once it is no longer the bottleneck [9]. For a leader, it is a way to decide which single problem deserves attention first.
Which priority method should you use?
- Too much to do today: the Eisenhower Matrix or ABCDE.
- Never getting to the big project: 3-3-3 or time blocking.
- A team project with a deadline: MoSCoW for scope, Kanban to track progress.
- Too many goals: the 25/5 rule or the Pareto principle.
- Work keeps getting stuck: the theory of constraints.
Most people end up combining two: one to decide what matters (Eisenhower, ABCDE, MoSCoW) and one to make sure it happens (time blocking, Kanban).
Questions about setting priorities
How do I set priorities when everything feels urgent?
Use the Eisenhower Matrix to separate urgent from important. Urgent but unimportant tasks can usually be delegated or batched, which leaves time for the important ones [2].
What does it mean to set priorities?
It means ranking what you need to do so the most important things get your time and attention first, and deciding consciously what to leave undone.
What is another way to say setting priorities?
Prioritising, ranking tasks, putting first things first or triaging your workload.
What are the five levels of priority?
In Brian Tracy’s ABCDE method: A (must do), B (should do), C (nice to do), D (delegate) and E (eliminate) [1].
What is the 80/20 rule in time management?
The idea that about 20% of your tasks produce about 80% of your results, so you should find and focus on that 20% [8].
Sources
- Eric Partaker, ericpartaker.com, creator of this infographic.
- Wikipedia, Time management (Eisenhower method).
- Wikipedia, Oliver Burkeman.
- Wikipedia, Timeboxing.
- Wikipedia, Brian Tracy.
- Wikipedia, MoSCoW method.
- Wikipedia, Kanban.
- Wikipedia, Pareto principle.
- Wikipedia, Theory of constraints.
Last reviewed 2 November 2026
