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How to Get Control of Your Priorities

How to Get Control of Your Priorities

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 “If everything’s important, then nothing is important”. You’ve probably heard that many times. Yet, are you guilty of ignoring it? In today’s episode, I share with you a few ideas on how to best prioritise your days. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity Workshop The Hybrid Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 405 Hello, and welcome to the real episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. How many overdue flagged tasks do you have in your task manager? If you’re like most people, you will have quite a few. The question is: why are they overdue? You made a conscious decision that these tasks were important, but then did not do them when you wanted to do them. This is something I struggled with for years. I would add flags to anything I felt was important, then completely ignore them throughout my day. It wasn’t until I realised I was making a mistake and diminishing the power that flags give me, that I changed my approach. Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen this coming up in a lot of my coaching sessions, where I notice overdue flagged tasks cluttering things up and becoming a distraction to the user. The other issue here is that overdue flagged tasks cause an increase in anxiety. You flagged them because they were important or urgent, and now you have a long list of such tasks. Where do you start to get them under control? Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question, if you’ve been waiting for the 2026 Ultimate Productivity Workshop, then the wait’s over. Coming on the 8th and 15th of March, join me live for a festival of productivity. Featuring the COD foundation, the Time Sector System, and how to get on top of your backlogs and so much more, including the DPS (daily Planning Sequence and the WPM (weekly Planning Matrix). Places are limited, so get yourself registered today. Full details are in the show notes. And now it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Caroline. Caroline asks, “ Hi Carl, I’ve recently cleaned up my Todoist, and as I was doing so, I found a lot of flagged tasks that I had ignored. These are important tasks, and I don’t want to remove the flag. But it’s become so overwhelming. What’s the best way to use flags, in your opinion? Hi Caroline, thank you for your question. As a Todoist user, you have many options for your flags. There are technically four flags. P1 (red), P2 (orange), P3 (blue) and P4 (white). The P4 flag isn’t really a flag, since all tasks default to it. With these flags, there are many ways you can organise them. However, you do need one of them to be your priority flag. When I say “priority flag,” this is the one you use when a task absolutely must be done on the day it was assigned. Logically, you would use the P1 red flag for that. Now, this is where many people go wrong. It’s very tempting to add a flag to a task long before it is due. The feeling is that if the task is important, it will still be important on the day you plan to do it. Not true. Priorities change. You plan to finish a proposal for your most important client on Thursday, but that morning, your daughter has a serious asthma attack, and you are now in the emergency room of your local hospital. Where’s your priority now? Okay, I know that example is a little extreme, but those things happen. Priorities also change throughout the week. That important client may tell you the proposal is on hold for a few months, so there is no urgency. But new priorities will come along, don’t you worry. This is why adding your flags should be done at a daily planning level. Now I will caveat that. There are times when I know something will be the priority for the day. The script for this podcast, for instance, is today’s priority. I knew that when I planned the week, and I flagged it. It doesn’t matter what other things pop up through the week; when it comes to writing this script, it’s the priority for the day. Your core work will always be a priority. This is why I have people spend time working out what their core work is. After all, your core work is the reason you are employed. If you didn’t do your core work consistently, you would not have a job for very long. Even retired people need to consider what their core activities will be each day. I’m reminded of this following a ...
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