A simple planning tool which can help you is the "urgent/important" grid. This tool will help you map out all your activities in terms of how urgent or important tasks are in relation to how you plan your time to achieve your business goals.

Urgent = tasks that have a schedule or a deadline, i.e. how soon you need to tackle the task

Important = how valuable is this task? Is it working towards one of your goals? Is it a mandatory requirement? What will be the impact on your business of this task taking place or not taking place?

Urgent and Important - these are the things which need to be done ASAP. They can almost be seen as the "crises" that need to be dealt with as priority.

Important but NOT Urgent - these are usually the more active tasks, things that work towards your goals, with time taken to ensure that they are done to a high quality. These are the tasks that need to have time planned in, otherwise as they approach a deadline they then move into the urgent/important grid, where you are unlikely to be able to spend as much time on them as you originally planned!

Urgent but NOT important - these are tasks that have arisen and usually distract you from working on your important goals. We tend to react to them because the consequences will be immediate if they are not dealt with. Often other people throw things into this quadrant for you, phone calls, emails, requests. Consider if they can be rescheduled or if you can delegate them to another team member.

NOT Urgent and NOT Important - these activities are very often a distraction so avoid them where possible. They might even be tasks that you "like" to do and hence still do them. When your time is limited though you need to be honest with yourself on what your priorities are.

Unless we take conscious control of our decision making, we will tend to react to the urgent, even if it is relatively unimportant and put off the important unless it carries a sense of urgency, i.e. everything becomes urgent!