Increase your Efficiency and Effectiveness with Zapier

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Being busy on your to-do lists doesn’t necessarily mean that you achieve much progress

You might be busy all day managing a project, delegating tasks, or completing them and marking them as completed in your to-do apps, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you and your team perform effectively. If your priorities are vague, you might run on the hamster wheel achieving your results too slowly because of micromanagement. So, first of all, you have to set priorities that match your goals or your values to know that what you do leads to the direction you want.

Use a prioritization method that you can transfer to your favorite productivity app

Eisenhower matrix is probably the most well-known prioritization method. First, you draw a 2×2 matrix with Urgency on one axis and Importance on another. Then you put your tasks into the cells according to the Urgency and Importance. Lastly, you choose to do what is Urgent and Important immediately, schedule what is important and not urgent, delegate what is urgent and not important, and eliminate the rest.

There are similar other matrices with Impact and Effort on the axis, or Value and Risk, Value and Complexity, etc.

One problem with those drawn matrices is that it’s inconvenient to put the tasks on the matrix, and you have to copy the tasks from the paper to the computer afterward.

By the time we find 1st things 1st to be the best prioritization tool. It helps you set priorities by looking at your tasks from different perspectives. For example, you can evaluate your tasks from all of these angles: Urgency, Importance, Impact, Low-effort, Low-risk, Low-complexity. You can choose as many or as few criteria as seems necessary. Define what is important to you on your own terms: is it just tasks that make money or reduce costs? Is it what is sustainable? Does it bring value to your communities? Is it green and ecological? To keep your motivation higher, choose not only serious criteria but also those uplifting you, such as Creativity, Fun, and Inspiration.

The good thing about using 1st things 1st for prioritization is that it makes it easy for you to clarify priorities. Moreover, the tasks you enter are already in digital form, allowing you to transfer them to other apps.

Connect 1st things 1st to your favorite productivity app with Zapier

Do you use Trello, Notion, Todoist, TickTick, ClickUp, Microsoft To Do, Basecamp 3, Asana, monday.com, MeisterTask, or some other productivity app to manage tasks? You can connect it with 1st things 1st and get your priorities constantly exported from the prioritizer to the task management app. This can be done using Zapier as the no-code intermediary.

You would need these steps:

1. Create a project and prioritize weekly tasks with 1st things 1st.
2. Create a project or a to-do list at your favorite productivity app.
3. Add a Zap at Zapier, connecting your 1st things 1st project with the project or the to-do list at your favorite productivity app.
4. Click “Export via Zapier” at 1st things 1st to trigger exporting from 1st things 1st to your task management app.

In a week, you can change the tasks at the prioritizer, clarify priorities, and export them to the task management app by clicking on “Export via Zapier” again.

Need some examples? Here they are

• 1st things 1st ➔ ClickUp
• 1st things 1st ➔ Todoist
• 1st things 1st ➔ TickTick
• 1st things 1st ➔ Microsoft To Do
• 1st things 1st ➔ Asana
• 1st things 1st ➔ Trello

Less hamster wheel and more directional work leading to the fulfillment of your goals

When you care about productivity, you should search for ways to improve your workflows and systems and try to free yourself from dull, repetitive, or superficial tasks.

To be successful, you want to recognize your most important tasks, work on them, delegate other tasks to your team or an assistant, or leave it to yourself, when you don’t feel energetic and still want to spend your time usefully.

Using this effortless workflow with Zapier, you get the best of prioritization and project management. As a result, complete your mission and achieve your vision faster in your business, organization, or as an individual.

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Cover photo by Anna Nekrashevich