How to Prioritize Daily Personal Tasks Using the 1-2-3 Method

Daily Task and Information Overload

Many people have the feeling that the world spins faster today. And not only in their private lives. In our jobs, too, we struggle with a lot of information. More information, more e-mails, more projects - in our everyday working life, more and more tasks and challenges compete for our attention day after day. Your to-do list is also getting longer and longer, and it is sometimes difficult for you to identify the important tasks? Then the simple 1-2-3 technique will help you to regain an overview.

Prioritizing Tasks with the 1-2-3 Technique

The 1-2-3 method is a simple method taken from time management, which helps you to prioritize the upcoming activites every single day. And it's as simple as that:

• Take a look at your to-do list at the beginning of each working day.
• Under "1", note the most important and/or time-critical task.
• Under "2" you note the two tasks that are also time-critical and/or important, but do not have top priority today.
• Under "3" you note three smaller tasks that you would like to complete today.

Now work your way through the list in exactly this order from 1 to 2 to 3. Only after the first task with the highest priority has been completed you focus on the next two tasks. And only after the "2" tasks have been ticked off you move on to the "3" tasks. Of course, the day-to-day business usually interferes here and there. The telephone will ring, an urgent e-mail from a customer is arriving or a colleague contacts you suddenly with an important request. But this method helps you to focus again on the relevant things. With the 1-2-3 method you do not only create a prioritization, but you also learn to focus in the midst of today's flood of information.

The 1-2-3 Method with InLoox

If you keep your 1-2-3 list on a new piece of paper every day, you will lose orientation not only in the flood of information, but also in a flood of paper. You can also easily illustrate this method with the help of InLoox. It is recommended to use the 1-2-3 technique especially for project-independent - i.e. personal - tasks and to organize them in your own backlog project.

1. Create a new project for your personal tasks. 

2. Open the task view of the project and click on Status in the upper right corner of InLoox Web App.

3. Edit the status of the Kanban board for this project: Backlog, 1, 2, 3, Done. 

• Backlog: Here you collect all pending tasks. 
• Column 1: Store the most important and/or time-critical basis on a daily basis. 
• Column 2: Note two additional important and/or time-critical tasks. 
• Column 3: Contains three more smaller tasks that you would like to complete today. 
• Done: Here you can collect all tasks that have already been completed. 

With this backlog project and the 1-2-3 method you can organize your personal daily tasks quickly and easily with InLoox. In the Done column you can always see which tasks have already been completed and you can collect all new tasks in the Backlog column.

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