Quote:
|
Originally Posted by MEP
I think priority isn't something you carry around with you in your head. Priority is something you decide at the moment, and it changes from moment to moment....That's the difference between GTD and other systems. That's the goal that David Allen is trying to get us to work toward.
|
An excellent point.
I have, however, found priority very useful in my next-action review process. As I look through a long list of avaiable tasks (or next actions on many active projects), I may want to move things to the top of the list, or the bottom of the list. Dragging and dropping items on the list works to some extent, but I find it requires too much thought during review.
In iGTD, I like having a 1-5 priority selector, because I can work my way through the list once, tag everything with its priority at this moment, then sort by priority and start working down the list.
Dragging and dropping, on the other hand, causes the list to change while I'm reviewing it, which makes it a little harder to focus on a quick pass through the list -- I'll worry that I missed something as I shuffle through the ever-changing list. Additionally, when deciding where to drop something, I have to re-evaluate the tasks around its destination, even if unconsciously. I find this added mental load distracts me from quickly passing through the list.
Do you have any other ideas how one might prioritize a long list without lots of dragging & dropping?
And, unfortunately, OF doesn't seem to let me manually order my tasks in context view (which is where I normally work). It's always sorting by some criterion. Using the built-in notion of priority that Ken Case mentioned wouldn't really work here, because that appears to be priority-within-a-project; so these internal priorities can't be compared between projects.
This all suggests to me that there's a place for explicit priority (even if some people abuse it in non-GTD ways).