5 Simple Strategies to Prioritize the Actions to Reach Your Goals

As you work toward a goal, you can improve your chances of success by prioritizing the steps needed to achieve it. Prioritization is the process you use to decide the order in which you will complete a set of actions to achieve your goal in the most efficient, effective way possible. Any goal you’ve set — no matter how big or small — requires clearly defined priorities.

However, prioritization is easier said than done, especially when every action item feels like a top priority.

Why Prioritizing Your Actions Can Be Difficult

Prioritization uses the importance and urgency of each action item in a plan and orders them accordingly to reach a goal. Creating a group of actions to accomplish an objective may sound complex, but actions are the gasoline that fuels the car you drive toward your goal.

Many people put their plans to rest when it’s time for them to act. For example, maybe you’ve set a goal to lose 10 pounds within two months, but you still haven’t completed the first action on your list: Contact a personal trainer. Something keeps preventing you from taking action. Maybe you’re too tired after work, or your kids suddenly must attend an event, and you just can’t find time to make that phone call.

If these scenarios sound familiar, you’re not alone. According to psychologists, there are many reasons why we self-sabotage by prioritizing other activities over our action plans. These reasons include:

• Procrastination
• Fear of being out of compliance
• Fear of rejection
• Improper mindset
• Fear of failure
• Discouragement

How to Prioritize When Everything Feels Important

So, how can you move towards action (and away from fear) when working towards a goal?

It helps to break down what you need to do into action items and prioritize them according to:

• Sequence, which relates to how other actions are dependent on the action. For example, setting your alarm may not seem like a high priority, but if you don’t set it, everything you need to do to prepare before your 5 a.m. meeting won’t matter if you sleep through it.
• Impact, which is the significance the action will have on achieving your specific goal.

These criteria can help you objectively decide the order in which to prioritize your action items.

5 Steps to Prioritize Your Actions

Even with unlimited motivation, you won’t have enough time to complete every action you’ve come up with to achieve your goal.

Here is a simple process we teach as part of the Arootah 10 Step Success Formula you can use to help yourself prioritize action items:

1. Make a list of the actions you must take to meet your goal.
2. Compare the first action in your list to the others in sequential order until you find a higher-priority action.
3. Replace the first item with the higher-priority action.
4. Then, compare the “new” higher-priority action to the rest of the items on your list.
5. Repeat this process until you get to the end of your list.

The 80/20 Rule and Prioritization

You’ve likely heard of the 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle asserts that 80% of a goal’s outcome comes from 20% of the actions in its given plan.

Often focusing on 20% of your overall action items is enough to get you 80% of the way to your goal. This is good because you can then use the rest of your time to focus on other high-priority goals.

The Bottom Line

By working smarter and prioritizing your actions, you’re more likely to accomplish your goals.

Although prioritizing the actions in your plan sounds simple, we understand how complex it can seem when you’re just beginning to set a goal. For help setting and achieving your 2025 goals, sign up for our 7th annual Goal Setting Workshop on January 14th at 6 PM EST!