Alternative use of "priorities" to keep track of all urgent and / or important tasks
pawlov says:
Hi everyone!
I would like to share with you my use of the “priorities” in Remember the Milk. My method lets me remember about all the high priority tasks and at the same time, it makes me work on the long-term goals every day, thus giving a good balance at work. At the same time, it links the GTD system with the wildly popular “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
As you may well know, in the classic GTD method the use of priorities is discouraged. If we use it, we run the risk of completing only the high priority tasks and neglecting the “low priority” tasks as less important. This may be true, but I have found another use for the priorities that Remember The Milk puts at our disposal.
According to the famous “Roosevelt Matrix”, each and every task can be assigned to one of the four groups, depending on how urgent and how important they are. These groups are:
1. Important and urgent (such as preparing for that morning call at 10 a.m. or talking to our boss before he leaves the office to get some counsel or update him on the project)
2. Important and not urgent (at work this would be business development ad client relations, while at home it would be all self – development tasks, like working out, reading or keeping good relations with our loved ones)
3. Not important yet urgent (here are all tasks that we should do ASAP but which are not really that important; these are usually at work, such as printing out some documents for the meeting at 2 or calling the friendly IT guy to help us out with that pesky error we encounter when we try to shut down the computer)
4. Not important and not urgent (time wasters which needn’t – maybe even mustn’t – be kept in RTM).
As you can easily guess, I assign “high”priority to important and urgent tasks, “medium” priority to important and not urgent tasks and “low priority” to all tasks at work that I should get to and which are not that crucial. Then, I would follow the same routine during the working day:
- I start my day by opening up RTM (obviously)
- Then I would start with the “ones” as high priority tasks
- If I have some more time, I would start working on some “twos” to work on the relations with clients, do some pitching or to finally get to these e-trainings I was supposed to take 1 week ago
- From time to time I would tend to some “threes” as usually easy and quick tasks, which come and go during the day.
In this way I have some comfort that I will not forget either the most important tasks on a given day, but would also work on some longer-term projects.
Hope this helps!
I would like to share with you my use of the “priorities” in Remember the Milk. My method lets me remember about all the high priority tasks and at the same time, it makes me work on the long-term goals every day, thus giving a good balance at work. At the same time, it links the GTD system with the wildly popular “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
As you may well know, in the classic GTD method the use of priorities is discouraged. If we use it, we run the risk of completing only the high priority tasks and neglecting the “low priority” tasks as less important. This may be true, but I have found another use for the priorities that Remember The Milk puts at our disposal.
According to the famous “Roosevelt Matrix”, each and every task can be assigned to one of the four groups, depending on how urgent and how important they are. These groups are:
1. Important and urgent (such as preparing for that morning call at 10 a.m. or talking to our boss before he leaves the office to get some counsel or update him on the project)
2. Important and not urgent (at work this would be business development ad client relations, while at home it would be all self – development tasks, like working out, reading or keeping good relations with our loved ones)
3. Not important yet urgent (here are all tasks that we should do ASAP but which are not really that important; these are usually at work, such as printing out some documents for the meeting at 2 or calling the friendly IT guy to help us out with that pesky error we encounter when we try to shut down the computer)
4. Not important and not urgent (time wasters which needn’t – maybe even mustn’t – be kept in RTM).
As you can easily guess, I assign “high”priority to important and urgent tasks, “medium” priority to important and not urgent tasks and “low priority” to all tasks at work that I should get to and which are not that crucial. Then, I would follow the same routine during the working day:
- I start my day by opening up RTM (obviously)
- Then I would start with the “ones” as high priority tasks
- If I have some more time, I would start working on some “twos” to work on the relations with clients, do some pitching or to finally get to these e-trainings I was supposed to take 1 week ago
- From time to time I would tend to some “threes” as usually easy and quick tasks, which come and go during the day.
In this way I have some comfort that I will not forget either the most important tasks on a given day, but would also work on some longer-term projects.
Hope this helps!
louise.marston says:
Thanks for this breakdown. I tend to keep '1's for only the most important task, but then I have trouble sifting through all the others.
This sounds like a useful approach, and I'll give it a go.
This sounds like a useful approach, and I'll give it a go.
Log in
to post a reply.