Prioritizing Tasks: Actionable Steps and Best Practices to Get Things Done

Prioritizing tasks can be one of the most challenging aspects of daily work. Should people kick off their day by answering emails or updating spreadsheets? Or maybe working on that new project that’s more like thinking than task-related?

This dilemma has long been a struggle for workers and, according to recent stats, will continue to be for quite some time.

It’s part of managers’ and HR’s work to help teams prioritize tasks more easily to get work done and move forward with meeting business objectives. But how can those leaders actually help?

In this article, we’ll explore tips, insights, and best practices for HR professionals and business leaders to guide their teams toward more efficient task prioritization, starting with what it means to consider logic when prioritizing tasks.

Workplaces tend to bring together people with different work styles. Some are naturally more impulsive and thrive on flexibility, while others prefer structure and routine. As a manager, it’s important to acknowledge these differences. 

But when it comes to prioritizing tasks, adopting a logic-driven framework is non-negotiable. A clear, rational process ensures that everyone is working toward shared goals and reduces the chaos that comes from more reactive decision-making.

What does it mean to consider logic when prioritizing tasks? In short, it means eliminating guesswork to drive actual results. In logical prioritization, you’ll step back to analyze tasks objectively, weighing their urgency, relevance, and sequence. You’ll evaluate deadlines, dependencies, and available resources firsthand to focus on what truly matters.

Leading with logic turns scattered effort into predictable delivery. Managers and HR can reinforce this by making dependencies visible, timeboxing deep work, and using simple decision rules (e.g., “highest impact under current constraints goes first”). The result is less context switching, clearer trade-offs, and a shared rationale for what the team does next.

Let’s explore some best practices to help your teams prioritize tasks with rationality and drive.

Everything starts with visibility. Ask team members to externalize all of the work on their plates: deliverables, meetings, follow‑ups, dependencies, and even “thinking time.” Capturing tasks in one system, such as a shared doc, project tool, or simple spreadsheet, reduces cognitive load and prevents hidden work from derailing priorities. 

Encourage a consistent format for this task list:

• Actionable title: Start each task with a verb (e.g., “Draft Q4 hiring plan”).
• Due date or target window: Indicate when it needs to land.
• Effort estimate: Use metrics like S/M/L or number of hours.
• Impact statement: Describe how it advances a business or team goal.
• Owner and collaborators: List who is responsible, and who needs to be consulted or informed.

A task list is necessary but not sufficient on its own—you need a method to sort it. The next step is to teach your team to apply a consistent set of rules to the listed tasks so that choices are defendable, repeatable, and easy to audit. 

Below are four proven approaches common to workplaces around the world. Assess them according to your team’s needs and choose the one that works best, or mix and match to create a more custom and comprehensive method.

This approach was popularized by Mark Twain’s famous quote: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning.” This bit of wisdom means that you should tackle your hardest and highest‑value task first—i.e., your “frog.” 

Here’s why it works:

• Beats procrastination: Starting with a tough task builds momentum and reduces mental drag for the rest of the day.
• Protects deep work: You can deploy your best energy on work that truly moves the needle.
• Clarifies trade‑offs: If the frog isn’t obvious, your list is either too vague or lacks impact/effort data.

Example: A recruiter’s frog might be, “Calibrate the job scorecard with hiring manager,” not “Clean inbox.” Finishing the scorecard accelerates every downstream step (e.g., sourcing, interviews), while inbox zero rarely changes outcomes.

Curious about how to implement these methods with your employees? Click below to speak with our experts and discover how our talent development and outplacement coaching solutions can elevate the energy and productivity of your entire workforce.

What are the four levels of prioritizing tasks? They are a notion made famous by the Eisenhower Matrix, which sorts tasks into four quadrants (or “Q”s) by urgency and importance:

1. Q1 = Urgent and Important: Critical deadlines and incidents. Do these first.
2. Q2 = Not Urgent and Important: Planning, capability building, and stakeholder alignment. Schedule these with intention.
3. Q3 = Urgent and Not Important: Workplace interruptions and some admin. Delegate, minimize, or set boundaries for these.
4. Q4 = Not Urgent and Not Important: Distractions that should be eliminated.

Tips for managers:

• In weekly reviews, ask employees to group their top 10 tasks by quadrant. If Q1 dominates, solve any upstream issues (e.g., unclear intake, late handoffs) rather than rewarding heroics.
• Tie Q2 tasks to OKRs so that “important” is not subjective. For example, Q2 HR tasks could include manager training, talent mapping, and policy improvements that prevent future fire drills.
• Create service‑level agreements (SLAs) for Q3 tasks (e.g., “Acknowledge in 1 hour; deliver in 48 hours”) so that they don’t crowd out Q2.

Assign a letter to each task to clarify its trade‑offs:

• A = Must do: Serious consequences if not done.
• B = Should do: Important, but lower consequence.
• C = Nice to do: Optional improvements.
• D = Delegate: Someone else can do it effectively.
• E = Eliminate: No longer adds value.

Practically, A–D mirror the four levels of prioritizing tasks most leaders adopt (i.e., Critical/High/Medium/Low), with E serving as an explicit stop‑doing category. Within each letter, rank items in order of priority (e.g., A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on) to prevent confusion.

Example: For an HRBP, “Close compensation review for Sales” is A‑1 (due to deadline and high consequence), “Draft ER training outline” is B‑1, “Refresh onboarding slides” is C‑1, “Collect benefits FAQs” is D‑1 (to be delegated to a coordinator), and “Migrate old notes” is E-1.

One of the most common methods for prioritizing tasks, Agile brings prioritization into a structured cadence. Rather than carrying an endless task list, teams operate in short sprints (e.g., one to two weeks) that each have a committed scope. 

The key elements of this method are:

• Backlog grooming: Maintain a single, ordered backlog visible to everyone.
• Sprint planning: Select the highest‑value items based on business goals and capacity.
• Daily stand‑ups: Surface blockers early.
• Retrospectives: Improve the system, not just the work.

Tips for managers: Many Agile teams use WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) or a simple Impact ÷ Effort score. For WSJF, compare the economic benefit of delivering now versus later, then divide by job size. This favors quick wins with outsized value.

Converting priorities into time on the calendar is where plans become reality. Coach employees to time‑block their top priority work (i.e., frogs, Q1, or A tasks) during peak energy hours and batch their routine work (i.e., Q2 or B/C tasks) into lower‑energy blocks. 

Here’s a simple weekly rhythm:

1. Map constraints: Fixed meetings, deadlines, and personal commitments.
2. Block deep‑work windows: Two to four sessions of 60–120 minutes for A tasks; protect them with do‑not‑disturb norms.
3. Batch maintenance: Email, approvals, and admin in one to two blocks per day.
4. Add buffer: 10–20% cushion for surprises; otherwise, priorities could get displaced.
5. Daily reset: Pick the next day’s frog and pre‑stage materials.

Tips for managers: Audit your team calendars monthly. Look for (a) meetings without decisions, (b) double‑booked deep‑work hours, and (c) recurring sessions that lack clear outcomes. Replace status meetings with async updates and reserve meetings for making decisions. This reflects the core logic of prioritizing tasks: time should follow value.

This one relates directly to “eating the frog”: schedule high‑effort, high‑impact work first while energy is highest. This doesn’t mean ignoring quick wins; it means sequencing so that the big rocks land reliably.

How to identify high‑effort: Estimate hours, dependencies, and cognitive load. Pair that with impact (revenue, risk reduction, employee experience). An item that is 8 hours with high impact should be started early in the week; a 30‑minute task with medium impact can be batched later.

Tips for managers:

• During planning, ask each person to nominate one “big rock” and require a written definition of done.
• Remove blockers proactively (e.g., access, approvals, data).
• Shield the calendar—move nonessential meetings out of the deep‑work window.

Example: Creating a new policy (e.g., hybrid work guidelines) requires research, legal review, and alignment. Start Monday morning with the outline and stakeholder list, use midweek for interviews, reserve Thursday for drafting, and Friday for review. Quick wins (e.g., FAQ clean‑ups) can fit around this spine.

Need help training your leaders and managers on how to implement these prioritization methods on their teams? Click below to connect with our Careerminds experts and learn about our outcome-based leadership coaching solutions.

Efficiency is not speed at all costs—it is effectiveness per unit of time. Encourage teams to automate repeatables (e.g., templates, mail merges, intake forms), standardize decision criteria (to reduce escalations), and practice progress over polish for internal work.

Some people like to say they excel at multitasking, but in reality, it actually fragments attention and elongates cycle time. 

Instead, teach single‑tasking with context-switching boundaries:

• Window your focus: 30–90 minute focus blocks with a specific outcome.
• Silence inputs: Pause notifications, and use status messages to set expectations.
• Batch similar work: Review all resumes, then write all feedback, then send all updates—don’t ping‑pong.
• Use a capture pad: Jot down new ideas without leaving the current task, and then triage them later.

Tips for managers: Model this by declining “quick questions” asked during deep‑work hours and by praising task completion, not just time spent being busy. Over time, throughput will rise and error rates will fall because people are able to fully load one task at a time.

Realism means matching ambition with capacity. Build a culture where people identify constraints early and quantify trade‑offs clearly. 

Here are some practical moves you can try:

• Right‑size commitments: Cap in‑progress Q1 or A tasks to one per person, with a waiting list for the rest.
• Add buffers: Protect 10–20% of the week for unplanned but inevitable work.
• Timebox perfection: Set a maximum number of hours for polishing versus shipping.
• Negotiate openly: If a new Q1 or A task appears, ask yourself, “Which current Q1/A task should slip?”—and make the trade‑off explicit.

Prioritization gains power when it’s shared. Individuals can sort their own lists, but cross‑functional work stalls unless teams can agree on the sequence, owners, and definitions of done. Make prioritization a recurring conversation with a light process that people will actually use.

Every team has a rhythm and constraints (e.g.,time zones, on‑call schedules, approval gates, dependencies on other functions) that you first need to identify and understand. 

Map out these elements explicitly:

• Flow of work: Where requests enter, how they’re triaged, and who decides.
• Skill inventory: Who is best at what, and where cross‑training is needed to reduce single points of failure.
• Work in progress (WIP) limits: How much each role can meaningfully carry at one time.

Tips for managers: Use simple diagnostics, like cycle time (from idea to done), percentage of time spent on Q2 work, and the ratio of planned vs. unplanned tasks. Understanding the system enables you to improve it. In other words, it provides the logic for prioritizing tasks at the team level.

Co‑create the sequence of work with your stakeholders. 

These are some techniques that work across functions:

• Backlog grooming: Review and reorder the shared backlog weekly; attach impact statements and effort ranges.
• Capacity planning: Publish available hours/points for the next sprint so that the scope fits reality.
• Decision logs: Capture why Task A outranks Task B—useful when priorities change.

Tips for managers: To determine the four levels of prioritizing tasks in a group setting, agree on a common scale (e.g., Critical/High/Medium/Low, MoSCoW). Apply it consistently across teams so that Marketing’s “High” equals Engineering’s “High,” for example. This reduces friction and speeds up handoffs.

Visibility keeps priorities alive. Share what’s in flight, what’s next, and what’s blocked using a simple dashboard. Favor charts and bulleted updates over long narratives. 

Here are some recommended practices:

• Weekly status pulse: One slide or short post with “done,” “doing,” “next,” “risks,” and “decisions needed.”
• Escalation path: If a task is blocked for more than 24 hours, it escalates automatically to a manager or project lead.
• Stakeholder updates: Tailor communication cadence and content to the audience—execs need outcomes and risks; peers need dependencies and dates.

Tips for managers: When priorities shift (and they will), clarify the why. Tie changes back to the logic (i.e., impact, effort, timing) so that people see rational sequencing rather than arbitrary churn. Overcommunicating progress is how teams can hold the line on “do first what matters most.”

Prioritizing tasks must be part of a culture of focus, alignment, and efficiency. By writing clear task lists, using proven prioritization frameworks, scheduling strategically, and collaborating as a team, managers and HR can help both employees and the business thrive.

The goal isn’t to do more, but to do what matters most.

Teach employees how to consider logic when prioritizing tasks and introduce them to the best practices above. You’ll see them making smarter decisions and reducing wasted effort, resulting in better performance, reduced stress, and stronger alignment with organizational goals.

If you’re planning a layoff event and are having trouble prioritizing tasks yourself, consider outplacement and coaching services. Click below to speak with our experts and learn how Careerminds’ modern, results-driven approach to outplacement can help you build an optimal layoff event, supporting your departing staff while maintaining morale and productivity.