[wilsonng]

I personally don't use priorities as a label in my workflow. After a long time of trying to use "priorities" in my Franklin-Covey Day Planner and never really getting it to work, I've been able to break free of the priorities label. I've read lots of time management books or task management books and was never able to really use it.

I know that many books tries to tell us that priorities do work. But oftentimes, life is so dynamic, it will change the priorities of everything within minutes or seconds of a new event that just occurred.

I've had to finally rid myself of the notion that labelling tasks with priorities somehow motivates me to finish the important tasks. Now I've switched priorities to one of two statuses:

1. High priority items that have been flagged or are due within the next 7 days. I've gotta get this done. This is the basis for my "Today" perspective.

2. All my other tasks/projects that I'd like to keep in my future plans but there is no real due date.

The first thing I look at in OmniFocus is the Due Soon perspective to see what needs to be done ASAP. Then I'll look at my Today perspective which shows Flagged and Due Soon tasks. When I've finished as much of my tasks in my Today Perspective, I'll look at my Next Actions perspective which shows all my available tasks.

My Today perspective shows my most urgent tasks that are due soon and/or flagged. I don't need an ABC priority label to show me what's urgent and important. I just look at "Today."

Stripping away the priority labels has streamlined my workflow and simplified my life.

Good luck if you still need priorities. Years of books and life coaches tried to teach me about priorities. But, really, anything that is priority should either be flagged or have a due date on it.

It took me a long time to see Omni's and David Allen's viewpoint about the unnecessary need for priority labels when we already prioritized due soon and/or flagged tasks/projects.