WORKFLOW

Priority Planner

Pick what matters today when everything looks urgent.

What this solves

This workflow ranks tasks by impact, urgency, and effort so you can commit to a short list and stop context-switching all day.

When to use / when not to use

  • Use at start of day or before a focused work block.
  • Do not use for crisis response where priorities are externally dictated.

Inputs needed

  • Full task list for the day or week
  • Time available today
  • Hard deadlines and dependencies

Copy-ready prompt block

Act as an execution planner.
Rank my tasks and produce a realistic plan for today.

Rules:
- Score each task 1-5 for Impact, Urgency, and Effort
- Recommend top 3 priorities only
- Identify tasks to defer, delegate, or drop
- Build a time-blocked schedule for [X] available hours

Tasks:
[paste list]
Constraints:
[paste deadlines, meetings, limits]

Execution steps

  1. Paste your full list, even small tasks.
  2. Accept only top three priorities for today.
  3. Schedule those three into calendar blocks.
  4. Move deferred items into a later queue.

Expected output format

Top 3 Priorities
1) Task — Why now
2) Task — Why now
3) Task — Why now

Defer / Delegate / Drop
- Item | Decision | Reason

Today Schedule
09:00-10:30 ...
11:00-12:00 ...

Concrete example

Input includes 17 tasks and 4 free hours. Output selects “Client incident response,” “Payroll correction approval,” and “Board update draft” as top three, then defers six medium-value tasks to Thursday.

Common mistakes

  • Trying to keep more than three priorities
  • Ignoring effort when judging urgency
  • Not reserving buffer for interruptions

Quick quality check

  • Top three fit available hours
  • Deferred list has clear dates
  • High-impact work is front-loaded
  • Schedule includes a 30-minute buffer

Next step

Download the Starter Kit for reusable daily planning prompts.

Get the Starter Kit