When you have competing deadlines, how do you prioritize your work?

One of the biggest challenges for team members and leaders is accurately prioritizing projects. When faced with conflicting priorities, you're forced to manage your time and rank those tasks in order of importance. Even if you have the best project management software, you're the one who enters information into the tool.

"I prioritize my work by creating an Excel spreadsheet of my projects and their deadlines so I can see everything at a glance. Then, I sort and adjust the spreadsheet to prioritize my work based on the importance of a project, how long it'll take, how urgent it is, and whether I'll need input from other team members to complete the work. I review this sheet each morning. I've found that by communicating with my team and manager throughout each project and tracking everything in Excel, I'm able to manage all of my tasks and hit each deadline, even if we hit some unexpected challenges or delays. Communication is key in all of this."