Prioritize

How it is used

Managers prioritize work, projects and requests, and ask their teams to do the same. The noun is priority: top priority, conflicting priorities. It is also a polite way to say no: 'We need to prioritize the launch.'

Example sentences

1. We can't do all ten projects this year, so we need to prioritize.

2. Please prioritize the client's request over the internal report.

3. She's very good at prioritizing when everything seems urgent.

Common collocations

• prioritize tasks
• prioritize the work
• clearly prioritize
• top priority
• competing priorities

Related terms

• decision-makingThe process of choosing between different options, including collecting information, weighing risks and benefits, and agreeing who makes the final choice.
• workloadThe amount of work a person or team has to do in a given period, often discussed when it seems too heavy or unevenly shared.
• trade-offA situation where you accept less of one thing to get more of another, such as lower quality for faster delivery; also the balance you choose between the two.
• goalSomething a person, team or company wants to achieve, usually described in broad terms and over a longer period, such as becoming the market leader.
• delegateTo give part of your work, responsibility or decision-making power to someone else, usually a person in your team, while still checking that the result is achieved.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• prioritize · Software Engineering
• prioritize · Product Management
• prioritize · Business English

More terms: Decision Making

• consensus
• escalate
• sign off
• risk assessment
• data-driven
• top-down
• gut feeling