Hi Nate!

Happy to elaborate more.

You asked: Would you please elaborate on how you might treat a high-priority next action or project differently when clarifying and organizing vs. low priority ones?

The prioritizing I’m doing during clarifying starts by asking, “Is it actionable?” Yes or No are the only answers to that. “NO” options are trash, reference, or incubate (Someday/Maybe or Calendar Tickler). If “YES”, the next question to ask is, “What’s the Next Action?” There are 3 choices about what to do with it then: Do now (if it will take less than two minutes), delegate (can someone else do this?), or defer (move to calendar or Next Actions lists). What I think you’re asking is fine tuning under defer. You know it’s actionable, but you can’t do it in the moment, and you’re choosing not to delegate it. So your choices for defer would be to put it on your calendar if it needs to be done ON a day, or on a next actions list sorted by context if it needs to be done BY or ANY day. That’s your call based on when you think you can/should work on this. Then taking it a cut further, to delineate it as a higher priority item, I use due dates–but sparingly. Don’t get caught in a trap of fake due dates. I use them judiciously, so when I see one I really take notice.

Then day-to-day, I’m looking at my calendar daily for actions that need to be done on a day or at a time. I’m looking at my Next Actions lists any chance I get. I sort my lists by due date so they rise to the top.

I did two webinars on GTDConnect.com you might get value from too called “The Art of Choosing Yes” and “The Art of Choosing No”. The free trial will give you access to those recordings.

Hope that helps!

Kelly

It seems I was not quite correct about GTD and (non-project) planning – this is from ‘Getting Things Done’, the book (P98 in my e-book):

“First, constant new input and shifting tactical priorities reconfigure daily work so consistently that it’s virtually impossible to nail down to-do items ahead of time. Having a working game plan as preference point is always useful, but it must be able to be renegotiated at any moment.”

So, the value of having a plan to begin with is acknowledged.

I see I have strayed off topic, from ‘Priorities and GTD’ into ‘Planning and GTD’, but I take comfort in David Drake’s post, which shows that these aspects are related.

Kelly,

Would you please elaborate on how you might treat a high-priority next action or project differently when clarifying and organizing vs. low priority ones? It would be nice if medium and low-priority projects could all get relegated to someday/maybe, but they may become high priority and need to be addressed before my next weekly review. I know that David says that when you really mature your thinking, everything you aren’t doing this very minute is a someday/maybe. Clearly my thinking has room for growth :)

Thanks,

Nate

Rob,

You make many excellent points about the importance of priority when choosing what to do now. In my opinion, priority is difficult to track because it is subject to change, whereas context usually is not. What seemed most important yesterday might not still be most important today. What required a phone yesterday probably still requires a phone today. Further, if I am on an airplane and want to be productive, I really don’t need to look at my @calls list, because that just isn’t an option until we land no matter how high of a priority I think a particular call is.

I keep my lists in Outlook Tasks and have a !Today category that self sorts to the top. I apply this category to high-priority tasks that need to get done today, in addition to the category of whatever context I applied when I entered that particular next action into my system, so it shows up on both lists. If something is no longer a !Today level priority but still needs to get done eventually, I remove the !Today tag and it stays in the original context list.

I agree with you that we shouldn’t get too rigid about choosing from contexts as they are often (but not always), flexible given the importance of a competing priority. Intuitive decision making based on a relatively recent, “weekly” review of all lists should take priority over contexts whenever possible.

Thanks,

Nate

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve listened to the GTD audio book at least 5 times, and I always have trouble listening to the part where David talks about how one should approach deciding what to do. It is made very clear: you ALWAYS consider context first… and should ALWAYS consider priority last… no flexibility.

I think one of the problems is that an action’s priority is not formally tracked in GTD…
perhaps because it is so dynamic, and because it is relative to other actions being tracked. For that matter, the time and energy required to do an action are also not formally tracked in GTD. Yet, each time we need to decide what to do (by reviewing actions in a context list), we must determine these things again and again. This seems redundant, since the time and energy required don’t change each time you review that action. Maybe the reason these things aren’t tracked in GTD is because they would make GTD become too “heavy”, where the process becomes tedious?

However, what if an action’s priority WERE tracked in GTD? Would it be valuable for one to review a list of ones highest priority actions (independent from context)? I personally think this would be extremely valuable! I’d have less stress wondering whether my focus is on the most important actions.

GTD emphasizes the importance of getting things out of your head; however, if I’m always concerned that I’m not working on the most important things (because my system doesn’t offer an easy way to identify them), then I will trust my system less. This has been one of the biggest hindrances to my becoming fully engaged in GTD, and I’m hoping to find a solution because I really do recognize the great power it offers.

Rob

I really like your comments, Rob. I resolve some of these issues by creating time blocks on my calendar for projects and major tasks that I consider high priority, regardless of context. As you stated, I will make sure that when that time block arrives, I have everything — the appropriate tools — to be able to execute on that project of task.