Natalie Lamb and the managing of your PhD: Goals and prioritisation

Priotisation of daily work is important to be able to achieve your long term goals. This can be achieved in a few ways:

• Reconnect with your goals. What are they? Why are they important? When must they be achieved? How are you working towards completing them?
• Keep a to do list (whether this is daily, weekly, monthly does't matter. Whatever works best for you) and prioritise the tasks on it. You could maybe even assign the time required for each task. 
• Use a diary and ensure everything is in it, including any deadlines that you have to meet.
• Narrow down goals into smaller achievable steps.
• Lapsing is OK but do your best to get back on track.

Do you know how you use your time at work? Working effectively means that you're doing the right thing but working efficiently is doing the right thing in the best way. You may be very busy every day but may not be completing the tasks required to complete your overall goal.  

You could try keeping an activity log for a few days to find out how you are spending your time. Create a spreadsheet with the below headings. After filling it in, you will able to eliminate jobs that are not part of your role or that don’t help you meet your objectives- the “Reject or Decrease” jobs. 

References
Lawton, E. (2017), Managing yourself and your PhD: To achieve a better work / life balance, Think Ahead, The University of Sheffield.