Hi Steve, I actually agree with most of what you say.
* I'm not really concerned at all with either "Importance" or "Urgency". * I don't rank items in my outline by either or these factors, as I agree with you that they can become a (not-so-subtle) form of procrastination. * As I've mentioned before, I have a large outline of tasks, organized by Project. I mark the Next Action in each Project (using the Weekly Goal flag), and then I filter by context (e.g., @work). The result is my Today list -- which could be anywhere from 5 to 15 items. * Without interruptions, I could do all of these tasks in a day. However, there are two factors that make me want to put this list in a particular order: 1) I have mild ADHD, and I am easily distracted. Every time I have to re-scan that list of 5 to 15 items for my next task, there's a risk that I will careen off into thinking about my priorities for the day all over again. To manage myself well, I really need to make this decision ONCE for the day (subject to interruptions, see #2!), and get on with the job of working my way down the task list one by one. 2) my job is (often and unpredictably) interrupt-driven. A supervisor can add one, two, or five tasks in a single call or visit (and the knock-on effect is that one, two or five OTHER tasks won't be able to be completed today). Even if the supervisor doesn't add tasks, they can instantly re-set my priorities for the day. When this happens, I need to *instantly* reorder my list to reflect my new work reality. This is the only circumstance where I ever even touch the "Importance" or "Urgency" sliders. I use them as an (ugly) kludge to get my items to move up or down the To-do list. As I've mentioned before, more often than not I become frustrated with this process -- I can't get the items to land where I want, or the controls are too twitchy. I often give up and go to a paper list, leaving MLO aside until things calm down again. This frustrates me, as I want MLO to be a useful tool for me *especially* in times of high stress when there are many moving parts to my day. I understand that people may organize their day in completely different ways from mine. I understand that many people have complete control over their day and can work on an uninterrupted basis (in fact my part-time freelance job is like that). However, I don't think that the way I am organizing my day -- or the way in which I would like to use MLO -- is an unreasonable or an unusual one. I hew pretty closely to GTD principles. I don't use any prioritization in order to arrive at my "Today" list; it's mainly flaggin "Next Actions" in my active Projects. But once I *do* determine my Today list for each day, it helps my concentration a great deal if I am able to quickly shuffle them into the "correct" order for the day -- based on my intuition and my subtle understanding of my job. That's all that I'm asking for. thanks for listening, Nick On Mar 11, 5:50 am, "Steve Wynn" <[email protected]> wrote: > Overall the target of MLO to my mind is not really systems that are heavily > concerned with ordering of lists. The order is to an extent obtained more by > the grouping of similar items - via things like context. The general idea > being you create 'batches' of items that are related in some way. > > I would say if order is important then prioritise on only one factor in MLO - > Urgency. Forget importance because this throws too many different factors > into the mix with regards to the priority algorithm. Only utilise urgency on > tasks, not parent items - and remove the importance aspect altogether. Sort > your list's based on Goal and then Urgency. That way by quickly flagging > something as a weekly goal it will pop to the top of the list. By default > have all tasks set to normal urgency. Then moving tasks is just a case of > increasing/decreasing the urgency slider. Of course colour coding/formatting > can also be utilised now to highlight specific items. > > But I would question the use of ordering if a 'Today' list is in play. If > you have a list of items you will do today, then why would ordering matter? > Ordering only matters if you plan on not doing some of the items on your > Today list. Which then I think it sort of negates, to my mind, having a > 'Today' list in the first place. > > Priority ordering as far as understand in GTD is a minor factor. Next action > choice being determined by context, time, energy and then priority. I don't > think the idea is to have ordered context based lists that you work top to > bottom. Applying priority in that manner is in a way reducing the free-form > aspect of GTD as a whole, to my mind. > > I think Covey users have a case for more priority based ordering - although a > lot can be achieved by the use of contexts. But an A1,A2, B1, B2 priority > method would certainly help them I would imagine. That is if we have any > users of Covey? But then their major grouping is really based on Roles which > can be achieved via context. > > Overall I don't think ordering by importance or urgency really works. Much > better to my mind to have a list of items you 'will-do' today - no excuses. > Then ordering gets thrown out of the window. But to complete that list of > items you will probably have to adopt different methods of working, make sure > the list is Closed and no new items unless same day urgent are added etc. > > I would also consider if the order of a list is stopping you taking action > then it might be another subtle form of procrastination. I would imagine you > already really know what your priorities are for the day and don't really > need an ordered list to keep you on track. > > I recently adopted Autofocus (AF), after a few difficulties, this system has > no order with regards to lists. But utilises a series of Closed Lists, which > nullify the need for ordering altogether. But the system is hyper productive > and you can process a large volume of tasks in a very short space of time. So > I would be a little wary that applying too much order to lists, it might > actually have the opposite effect and be counterproductive. > > All the best > > Steve --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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