Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonng
When I change a project/task's status from "On Hold" to "Active" and move it out of the Someday/Maybe folder, this becomes a medium priority project/task. It is important but not urgent.
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I do priorities somewhat similarly to Wilsong and somewhat differently. I do put things on hold that I don't intend to do anytime soon, kind of highly de-prioritizing them, but I don't really use flags to highlight priority items. For me, using flags actually makes it harder to prioritize things.
I really rely on the order of my projects and contexts to indicate priority, though. My projects are ordered from the top down in declining priority. In my contexts, I have one context group of things that really require focus and attention, which I keep near the top. Under that, I have a context group of things that requires less focused attention. After that, I have my calls context. Then I have some other contexts that are really low priority, like things to read and webcasts to watch or listen to, which I de-prioritize because I could really do them at any time.
This arrangement really helps me stay focused on priority tasks with the context view: I select my high-attention context when it's time to focus and group by project; the most important projects are at the top of the list. The best part, is its generally only two to five items in each project. If I knock out only those handful of tasks that require the most work on the project, then it is much easier to follow through and eliminate the project entirely. It's also really important not to neglect your out-of-the-office contexts, but having those important projects at the top really makes it easy for me to judge how important it is to leave and get that stuff done.
The one thing that I would say about this arrangement versus setting numbered priorities is that it seems just as or more accurate and takes less time. For example, if you're like me and you have more than ten projects, and none of them are the same amount as important as the others, even if you weren't distinguishing between the individual tasks, you would run out of numbers. You would be saying that some things are the same importance as other things, which aren't. Then, it seems like you would have to just remember which are more important, despite having the same numerical importance setting.
Said another way, I feel like there isn't anything in priority that isn't because of where its project is situated and what context you have to do it in. Oh, of course, if it has a deadline. I cannot distinguish for myself, though, the difference in information that's going into project, context, and deadline (if dated), and which is going into priority. Furthermore, you have a choice of as many projects and contexts as you like, while on the choices of explicit priorities are one to ten or "unimportant" to "really super important!", which doesn't seem like the same amount of space.
I'm not trying to say people shouldn't have something and I know that people are comfortable with what they're comfortable with. But my view is, I really think you're missing out if you don't give one of the other methods included in this forum a try.