Task Prioritizing: Learning to Postpone
Posted on December 8, 2011 by GuestPost
Categories: Productivity
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Staying on top of everything has never been easy for me. Sure, I can usually always manage one or two things in my life really well. I could do really well at work but then I will usually slack on any personal or career development projects.
I had never been one for self-help productivity systems, but eventually I bought David Allen’s book and read about the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Yet, when I finally began implementing the GTD system, my productivity and project outlook still seemed to stand still. And I followed the system setup to a T. I collected, organized, and processed just about everything. Yet the implementation of the system was still somehow incomplete. The post below will explain why.
Figuring Out How I Prioritize
Let me preface this section with the fact that I have never had a tough time finishing things related to work. In addition to blogging, I work a nine to five job at an office, and I am usually so on top of my work that I would often omit certain job tasks (that I complete everyday) from my ‘focus’ task list (which is the list of tasks that have top priority that I should do whenever I have enough free time).
However, tasks on my ‘focus’ list ultimately became the problem with my productivity system. I think part of this came from the fact that I didn’t put some work-related things on my ‘focus’ list that should have been there (email correspondence lasting multiple days, early project planning, that type of stuff). I would usually still remember to do that stuff, but the fact that I was able to do it with no list kind of undermined the whole integrity of the list system.
Another reason that my ‘focus’ list never really took off is that I inherently dichotomized it to:
- Things I really need to do or else.
- Things that would enrich my life.
So ultimately I would usually only end up doing half the items on my ‘focus’ list, the ‘Things I really need to do or else’ half. The other items would stay on the list for months, balking at and undermining the whole concept of a ‘focused’ task list.
The Weekly Review
When I first started the GTD system, my weekly reviews were more like bi-monthly reviews. I would tend to write them in moments of weakness or vulnerability when I felt I was not achieving the things I wanted to accomplish. Even when I would try to review my progress, goals, and priorities regularly, I would not put enough attention on my ‘focus’ list.
In the one weekly review in which I did finally examine the gaping holes in my focus list, I began drawing many of the conclusions I described in the previous section. My focus list was:
- Not representative of many actual things and projects I was doing.
- Fragmented into tasks that I had to do and tasks that I would like to do but keep putting off.
- Representing an incomplete and misleading catalogue of that which I actually wanted to do.
The whole point of the GTD system was to transfer tasks from my subconscious and worrisome mind to a vetted, reliable system that prioritizes tasks based on necessity, goals, and aspirations. The focus list was intended to be the most active list of my GTD system, yet I had some tasks that would stay on the list for weeks while other tasks would not make it onto the list at all.
Cleaning Up the Productivity System
The first and most obvious step I took to complete my GTD system was to include the longer projects I had at work onto my focus list. This impacted a huge psychological improvement over my workflow because I could now:
- See that I was actually completing more tasks per day than my list previously demonstrated.
- Trust my list to include everything important that I needed to work on.
As for the other personal projects and aspiration ventures that I had on my focus list, I decided to take them off and postpone them indefinitely until my list was healthy and manageable. After a few weeks of actively moving tasks that I needed to do to the focus list and then crossing them off at the end of the day, I began to gradually add tasks relating to more personal projects. Except, this time, the personal projects actually got their due attention, and I was actually completing tasks for things other than work, bill paying, and housekeeping!
Bottom Line
I’m very much an all-or-nothing type of tasker; if I’m doing laundry, I have to fold and hang my clothes or I will not finish my laundry. I found out that my task priority system works the same way. If I’m not even attempting to complete everything on my focus list, then I am not going to consider completing even most things on the list. Of course, I may overload myself with too many tasks one day, but I will usually correct this at some point in the day by shifting some less important tasks out of the list. Then once I’m free, I can add them back. It may be slightly neurotic but it works for me.
This is a guest post by Jane Smith from background check. She is a Houston based freelance writer and blogger.
Photo by Brett Jordan
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