It’s as Simple as ABC: A System to Increase Personal Productivity

Accomplish more, in less time.  

In the increasingly busy and chaotic world of the legislature, staffers are regularly faced with this paradoxical demand.  Yet meeting this directive requires more than just an increase in effort.  Accomplishing more in less time demands a sharper focus on the things that truly matter, and a system of task prioritization that makes that distinction crystal clear.  To increase personal productivity in the legislative setting, staff members are wise to heed the words of efficiency expert Stephen R. Covey, who reminds us that “the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” 

The to-do list of a typical legislative staffer can be intimidating.  There are simply too many tasks for one person to accomplish in any given day.  Those unfinished items inevitably spill over onto the next day’s list, and as that cycle repeats itself, the resulting set of unmet goals can quickly become paralyzing.  Compounding this effect are the limitations of the traditional to-do list: they tend to add items in a random order, which offers the user no real sense of relative priority, and because of that, no clear order of execution. 

Fortunately, there is a simple way to reorganize the traditional to-do list into a document that clearly defines the most important tasks, while indicating the optimal order in which to tackle them.  Productivity guru Brian Tracy outlines this methodology in his bestselling book, Eat the Frog.  He calls it the ABCDE Method, a system of grouping tasks into simple categories, generating a visual roadmap for efficient execution. 

Each letter stands for a distinct category:

• A: very important; highest priority; serious consequences if not completed 
• B: important; a priority; moderate or minor consequences if not completed 
• C: nice to do; no negative consequences if not completed  
• D: delegate; this is a task that someone else can complete for me
• E: eliminate or extend; such a low priority that it doesn’t really belong on the list at all 

The first step is to assign each task to its proper category.  Tracy notes that the key to success with this method lies in our ability to truly discriminate between the essential and the important.  Think of it like medical triage: stopping the bleeding is essential, splinting a limb is important, and administering aspirin is nice to do.  Increased productivity requires ruthless prioritization. 

The next step in this method is to flip your to-do list from a traditional vertical layout into a horizontal orientation.  Now you have five columns across the page, rather than a long list down the page. 

Suddenly our main priorities are instantly clear!  An item that may have languished halfway down our traditional list is now clearly an A priority.  And an item that may have felt satisfying to cross off our list is now seen to be an E item—unworthy of the time you would have wasted accomplishing it.  Our order of execution is also instantly obvious: we work from left to right, finishing all A tasks before we move on to B tasks.   

But the greatest benefit of this method may be the way in which it makes a previously daunting task list seem instantly more manageable.  Even the busiest staffers will find that, when properly categorized, they have far less A items than B or C items.  Three tasks in our A column will always be less intimidating that 14 tasks in the old method.  And those “delegate” or “eliminate” tasks, which took up so much space on the old list, can now be seen for what they truly are—clutter to be removed from our consciousness. 

In the fast-paced world of the legislature, increased productivity can sometimes seem like a unicorn—a mythological entity that people talk about, but never see.  Yet a simple reorientation of our task list can create a reorientation of our priorities, from long and overwhelming, to focused and achievable.  At its core, productivity is a simple function of knowing what is essential, and of doing those essential things first.  And employing a system that makes that possible is as simple as ABC.