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Originally Posted by wilsonng View Post
Prioritizing is easy when you only have a handful of tasks. But when your projects and tasks start growing, prioritizing is not as efficient.

Imagine using the ABC priority. Then use A1 for high priority, A2 for high priority but in 2nd place, A3 for 3rd place. Then B1, B2, B3, etc.

But sometimes we mislabel something as high priority when it really isn't. There is a test for Level 1 priority, Level 2 priority, and everything else.

I relabelled the following perspectives and put them on my toolbar to indicate Priorities. No tags required


High Priority - Priority 1 (originally titled Due perspective)

Refer to your Due perspective to look for urgent, high priority items. These are time-sensitive tasks that are either due or due soon. You should be working on these items first.

If I want something to be labelled as urgent, I set the due date to today. I can also set it to a future date. When that date approaches, the task will appear in this perspective because it will be due soon. When the task turns red, I know that I really have to work on this immediately because it is either due today or is already overdue.

Medium Priority - Priority 2 (originally titled flag perspective)
Refer to your flagged perspective to look for the second level of items. These are items that you want to focus on your attention this week. You can work on these items after you've finished your due tasks.

I flag all of these items to indicate Priority 2 items.

Low Priority - Priority 3 (originally titled Next Actions available)
Anything left are all discretionary tasks that can be done at your leisure.

These tasks do not have a due date and also are not flagged.


Micromanaging and shuffling things between @Online-P1, @Online-P2 will not be easy. It may look fun in the beginning. But when you start amassing a larger list, it becomes cumbersome to re-prioritize.

If you start to go granular and try to apply A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, C3, you'll go nuts from micromanaging. When someone else comes in and says that their request is more urgent, you end up shuffling things downward or upward trying to move tasks around. It gets pretty pointless to prioritize because everyone else thinks their request is the most urgent. So, your priorities and someone else's priorities will not match and result in even more friction.



http://self-help.vocaboly.com/archiv...ot-work-today/

http://www.time-management-central.n...trategies.html
I am largely talking about my "Today" perspective which is derived from my planning perspectives (review of tasks and then flagging items to go into my "Today" perspective)

It's not a lot to ask: I have already narrowed down my tasks for the day (I am just talking about my active tasks that I am working on in the present - not all my multiple lists and projects) - I just want to see them in a logical order. Perhaps it's just my ADD that makes this so important to me - but surely this is logical for other people too? because I can't logically organize that list of up to 10 items, I find that I will hover over certain action items for much longer than I need to because for the 3rd time that day I am trying to make sense of it's logical order - it's distracting me, which is not productive.

I will add the ABC contexts that you suggest - as I am very frustrated not being able to put my "Today" list into a logical order.

On the bigger picture regarding prioritization of tasks - I really don't like assigning random dates and start dates (perhaps the nature of my work is more fluid than yours). I only use real dates or real start dates (very few of my tasks qualify for actual dates). I just want to know that I have some system of prioritization so that I can divide and conquer my lists efficiently - and not miss the stuff that should have been marked NOW or Urgent.