How do you prioritize things

I have so much I need to do with my site both for search engines and just the site in general. How do you prioritize. I want to get my site better ranked in search engines but I also want to work on content and ways to make money to help pay for the site. I think I should probably redo all my pages since I have learned a lot since I started but I have quite a few pages, maybe not as many as you all but to me its a lot. I am not sure whether I should waste my time trying to get them right or just work on doing it right from here on out. And if you are constantly having to adjust things to get it right I don't want to constantly be redoing things and not make headway on anything new. I am thinking I should focus on getting my site developed more with better content and let the rest of it fall in place. When you have tons to do, how do you decide what to do first?

I sort of unofficially divide my day into a pie graph. One slice of my day is dedicated to new content, one slice to research/develop new ideas/products, one slice to optimizing current pages, one slice to finding new backlinks, one slice to this, one slice to that.... you get the idea. now, i don't have any of this set in stone. basically, when i get tired of doing one thing, i shift gears and do something else. maybe for you, it would be better to do one thing on monday, another on tuesday, etc. hope that helps.

I have divided my site into blocks... most of the blocks are in ssi and changing just one file can change that content across my site or across all files in a folder. This allows me to be very flexible about running specials, changing the location of adsense, changing navigation, etc. Site management now is just managing a few files instead of updating thousands of pages. I even do a little optimization through ssi, changing the seasonal parts of my site and getting my main pages out for minor keywords.

As for dividing my time... I mainly let the spirit move me... when I have something that burns in my mind I work very hard on it and get LOTS done quickly. After that, I focus on what will bring the most money. Fortunately, there is usually some convergence of these two things.

Overall, I keep a job list with post-its and add, move, throw away as the workflow and ideas progrress.

I wish I knew more about web design. I have to change all my pages one at a time because I don't know what I am doing. I mean I can do basic stuff and I am getting better but it will be a while before I can do anything advanced. That is why it is such a pita for me.

Adding google adsense is certainly a good idea if you want to make money from your site.

when I have an idea, I update my to-do list. when I have time to do some work, I spend a few minutes reviewing the list, and pick one task.