Why you should review their methods of preparation of to-do lists
Work And Study Productivity / / December 23, 2019
How do we select priorities in their to-do lists? Obviously, most of the existing methods of drawing up lists of tasks based on priority. However, for many people who are building a list on a single criterion of priority, it becomes clear that the system periodically, if not permanently, gives failure. Let's try to look at a way of drawing up lists of tasks differently.
Source of the problem
The fact that the priorities are constantly changing, including with the addition of new tasks. In addition, in such a system is not considered a simple human factor. However, the list of tasks implies regularity. In an interview, David Allen, the alpha and omega of productivity, given resource GTD Times, explains the need to abandon the sort of tasks only to the parameter priority. This does not mean you have to opt out of this option, but the lists constructed according to this criterion, too often "merge" for several reasons:
- Organization of the list of priorities of «A, B, C» or «high, medium, low" output allows an inflexible system that is not able to adapt to the real course of events.
- The task of the highest priority at the beginning of the day, by lunchtime can be a low priority for a number of reasons. That is why the priority of nomination immediately upon the appearance of a new task ignores the simple fact that often the priority tasks is changing in a few minutes.
- When setting the deadline problem is often not taken into account the period of time when you are most productive.
- on the basis of the deadline priority tasks Installation does not include the time required to complete the task.
Of these theses should be self-evident truth: Priorities relevant to the tasks at the beginning of the working day, almost completely lost its relevance to the end of the day. Is there any sense in fielding priorities early in the day? Imagine the end of the day, when you are exhausted and want to get home. No priority will not make you at this time to take on another major project. Therefore, the list of tasks should take into account the hours when you are most productive and able to perform certain tasks. Of course, you can keep changing the priorities for tasks throughout the day, but it contradicts itself the basics of productivity: waste of time for the organization of work, instead of performing the work unacceptable.
An alternative approach
Rather, in real life, you will decide what to do on the basis of four criteria (in order of importance of each parameter):
- Context. What can you do in this particular situation?
- Time.
- Stamina.
- A priority. Performing a task will yield the greatest results?
As an example, consider a typical situation. At 10 am, you receive a message from the direction in which you are asked to deal with the problems on the server. The report says that the order is quite important, but do you know that work on the server may cause it non-functional, and now a large number of people are drawn to him. Also, you know that towards the end of the treatment to the server virtually cease working day. And yet you know that it is best to do you work at night, so why not transfer this task to the evening, when you are most productive and do not interfere with the activities of other people? As you can see, you add additional parameters in the process of reflection. Such an approach to the task list definitely needs more thought, but gives at the output and a much better result.
And on what settings you make to-do lists?