Quote:
Originally Posted by tah
Agreed. GTD is oversimplified for the real world. But oversimplified concepts sound good and sell more books.
GTD doesn't reflect the fact that for many of us do priority trumps context, no matter how much we wish that we had the luxury of efficiently doing everything by context
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Okay, well, let's talk "real world."
1) Priority fans rarely do their A tasks first, B tasks second, and so on. They do a lot of C stuff first because they're easier to knock out. As for their so-called high priority tasks, they'll nibble at some of their B's, but only get to the A's when they absolutely have to--when they're out of time and out of excuses. (Or if they've got an A priority email to get out, they'll do that, but then, since they're already in their email system anyway, they'll go through the rest of their new messages at that time. Which, by the way, in GTD lingo, is called their mail context.)
2) They waste a lot of time re-prioritizing their priorities. They get new tasks or new projects all the time, and they have to constantly compare the relative worth of those new tasks to the others already on their plate (and already prioritized).
How about just doing the work instead of constantly trying to figure out which task is more important? In your phone context today you see that you have six phone calls to make, so you make those calls, regardless of their relative worth to one another, and then move on to your next context. I would venture to guess that within those six calls are one or two that are more important than the others. The fact is though, you got them all done. And if you must have a visual aid showing you which of those phone calls is more important than the others, then flag them so you are sure to make those calls first. Or if you've got some low priority calls, then don't date them. In your Due perspective they'll show up in your phone context in the "No Due Date" group, so you can get to them whenever you have some spare time.
When it comes to organization systems, task prioritization has been around forever, ceratinly longer than GTD, so a lot of priority fans simply can't shake their old habits. Actually, they don't even want to try.