One of the key secrets to success is the ability & discipline to prioritise problems and deal with them one by one.
We all know how difficult and stressful it gets when problems mount up and you just don’t know where to start. Often lots of small problems mount up to become huge monsters that people are so afraid to deal with, and they end up hiding their heads in the sand whilst the monster just gets bigger and bigger.
It is at this point that excuses are being made for not tackling the problems, such as ‘I don’t know where to start’ or ‘this is too much for me to cope with’ – and the excuses are not too far from the truth either!
The First Step To Failure
Trying to take on too many tasks at once is the first step to failure and very often the modern concept of ‘multi-tasking’ leads to less efficiency and effectiveness, especially when the there are a number of difficult or time-consuming tasks involved.
The same can be said for taking on too many problems at once. All you end up doing is spreading your limited time, financial and brain resources to thinly to make any impact on your problems.
However, by focussing resource on one problem at a time, resolving it and moving onto the next problem, you are able to cut the big monster down to size and re-gain control of your life.
Successful Prioritisation In Three Steps
- Step 1: Make a list of the problems – Write down all the problems and issues that you need to deal with. Often just doing this simple exercise helps to put things in perspective and makes them a little less scary
- Step 2: Rank the problems in order of importance – think about the impact of each problem and rank into a prioritised order
- Step 3: Begin tackling each problem, one at a time – Take the highest priority problem and resolve it, then move onto the second highest priority problem, then the third and so on
By prioritising your resources to one problem and resolving it you have managed to make your list shorter. As you progress, you may come across other problems, but hey – that’s life. Simply add the new problem to your list, assess and rank it in order of priority and then get back to solving the highest priority issue.
Solving Money Problems
For many, money and debt are key causes of stress, but by listing and prioritising those problems it is possible to deal with them effectively and reduce stress.
Common debt problems include credit cards, store cards, overdrafts, bank loans, hire purchase agreements.
The simplest way to categorise them is to understand which of these debts charge the highest rate of interest (likely to be the store cards or the credit cards) and then focus on clearing that debt as the highest priority.
Obviously you will need to continue repaying the other debts (or risk ruining your credit history), but focus on ploughing any additional money you can find into your highest priority debt until it is paid off, then move onto your second highest priority debt and so on.
Note: If you are unable to make repayments on all your current debts, then you should seek help from a debt counsellor or specialist advisor immediately. Do not ignore unpaid debts.
Prioritising Money Saving Ideas
It is not just your problem-solving skills that can be helped by prioritising. The technique also helps us to implement ideas and opportunities more effectively.
The Money Saving Challenge has a huge list of money saving ideas that could potentially make you a couple of hundred quid better off each month, but trying to implement all of these ideas in one go will stretch anyone’s resource and is more likely to put them off saving money completely.
Some money saving ideas will help you to save more money than others and these should be your highest priority.
For example, reducing your mortgage repayments is a money saving idea that will probably have the biggest impact on your monthly budget. Achieving a 1% reduction in your rate is likely to lead to a saving of over £100 each month.
Therefore this should be priority number one. Once you have achieved this saving you can move onto your second highest priority, which might be reducing your shopping bills by £50 a month.
Having achieved that task, you can move onto your third highest priority and so on.
