Day 29: Prioritizing Tasks

Just joining in?  Read the entire series {HERE}.

Today I wanted to talk about how my little brain thinks when it comes to prioritizing tasks.   I'm curious to know how you go about your tasks when there are a lot of them.  Do you do the most pressing first? The most desirable first?  What kind of task-doer are you?

Tasks can be stressful, that's for sure.  Especially when there are many, many things going on at home or work or both and you are not even sure how you are going to get it all done.  Sound familiar?

Recently one night (okay, tonight) I had to decide whether to tackle many things that needed done for school (gradecards, reports, filing.....) or tackle many cleaning tasks that needed done in my house.  Experience tells me that I always seem to pick what makes me feel better visually.  For example,  I would clean off the counters first before doing the bills because I can't stand the visual clutter and I always have a hard time concentrating on tasks that need a lot of attention when I can see clutter around me.  

When deciding this most recent priority, I knew that lately school is really stressing me out because I always feel behind, scrambling, and like the list of things to do and that are due soon is getting out of hand.  I chose to work on my school stuff at home, even with dirty bathrooms and gross floors.  Normally this would drive me crazy, but the stress of school and the amount of work that needed to be done that I knew I couldn't get done during the school day HAD to get done at home, and SOON.  Putting off cleaning (which I do get help with, but it's more my crazy little self that has a problem with it than anything else) was difficult for me, but I had to make a choice.  The world will not end with my furry floors and icky bathroom sinks.  Will it?

Sometimes you have to weigh the tasks and figure out, in the long run, which is going to give you the most stress relief when you are done.   How do you weigh your tasks?