Priority Pad Guide

You have a lot to do and you are not sure where to start. That is exactly what the Priority Pad is designed to solve. Here is how to use it.

1. List Your Tasks

Start by writing down everything that needs doing — work, personal, anything that is taking up mental space. Do not filter or order at this stage. Getting tasks out of your head and onto paper is itself a cognitive relief: working memory has limited capacity, and an unwritten task list keeps the brain in a state of low-level alert.

The Priority Pad's origin: Clare (OCCO Co-Founder) used to walk into Ollie's office feeling overwhelmed, burying her head in the sofa. Ollie called it the “Flamingo” move, and from that running joke the Priority Pad was born — a tool to move from paralysis to a clear first action.

2. Assign an Urgency and Importance Rating

For each task, assign two separate scores from 1 to 10: one for urgency (how time-sensitive it is) and one for importance (how much it affects your goals). These are different axes and treating them as one leads to poor prioritisation — most people over-weight urgency and neglect importance.

1 = Not Urgent / Not Important. 10 = Very Urgent / Very Important.

3. Plot the Task on the Grid

The Priority Pad has four quadrants based on urgency and importance scores.

DO NOW

High urgency, high importance. These are your first priorities. Put them here and protect time for them before anything else.

DO NEXT

High importance, lower urgency. These matter for your long-term goals but are not on fire today. Schedule them deliberately — they are the tasks that tend to get crowded out by reactive work.

SCHEDULE

Lower urgency and importance. These need doing eventually but not today. Block time later in the week.

DELETE

Very low on both dimensions. Remove them. Carrying tasks that will never be done creates drag on your focus and false urgency every time you see them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main benefits of using the Priority Pad?

The primary benefit is clarity under cognitive load. When you have many competing demands, the grid forces a structured decision about what to act on — rather than defaulting to whatever feels most pressing or most comfortable. Secondary benefits include reduced decision fatigue across the day, better tracking of what has been completed, and a visible record of what was deliberately deferred or deleted rather than simply forgotten.

How do I stay on top of priorities over time?

Review your ratings regularly — urgency changes, and a task that was low-priority on Monday may become critical by Thursday. Focus time on the DO NOW quadrant first each day. Break large tasks into smaller steps so they can be rated and plotted accurately. And stay willing to move tasks between quadrants as circumstances shift.

What is the difference between urgency and importance?

Urgency is time-sensitivity — a deadline, a waiting person, something that goes stale quickly. Importance is impact — how much completing (or not completing) this task moves your goals forward. The confusion between the two is one of the most common sources of poor prioritisation. Urgent-but-unimportant tasks tend to dominate if you do not separate the two dimensions explicitly.

The tool that helps

The Priority Pad gives you a paper-based urgency-importance grid to cut through task overload and decide — clearly and quickly — what to work on first. See the Priority Pad.