To be successful at planning and productive, you’ve got to know your priorities. If you don’t, you’ll kill your productivity. To know what your priorities are, you have to start from the beginning. Set time at the end of the year to set your goals for the coming year. During those sessions, set your goals and prioritize them. When it comes time to place a related task on your daily to-do list, it will already have a priority level so there will be no confusion as to its importance. This way, you’re not prioritizing your schedule; you’re scheduling your priorities.
Typically you should have 1-2 priority items to complete for the day. To give you some information about prioritizing, I recommend the ABC method. Of course a top priority or something that is very important would be an “A” task. Things that have serious negative consequences fall under this category. A “B” priority is considered important-not as important as an “A” task. There are only minor negative consequences for not completing it. “C” priorities are things that would be nice to do, of course, not as important as A&B priorities and there aren’t any negative consequences for not completing them.
You can even take it a step farther. Look at all of you’re a tasks and assign numbers to them so that you end up with A1, A2, etc. Anything beyond a “C” priority is something that can be delegated or eliminated altogether. Get your priorities in order and revive your productivity.