One of the precepts of the Getting Things Done or GTDÂ methodology is that it’s not necessary to prioritize your Next Actions in advance, nor is it recommended. For one thing, priorities change. What seems important today might be completely unnecessary a week from today.
Also, priorities are contextual. Picking up a new cartridge for your laser printer is something you do while running errands, not at ten o’clock at night.
Priorities, then, should be established during your daily planning, which I contend should take place the night before, and “in the moment”.
To prioritize, review your action lists and determine what you want to do based on three factors: time, energy, and importance (priority).
So today, I may see a task that is important but will take a block of two hours and I don’t have that much time. Or it requires a fair amount of energy and I’m tired. Or I have lots of time but the task under consideration really isn’t that important. These tasks will have to wait.
Some people partially prioritize tasks as they add them to their lists, noting time (how much time they estimate the task will take) and energy (how much they will need, i.e., low, medium, or high). This way, when they don’t have a lot of time or energy, they can scan their lists to find tasks that match.
I usually don’t prioritize in advance. I add a lot of tasks to my list each day and I don’t want to take the time to think about whether something will take ten minutes or twenty minutes or whether I will need high energy or just medium. To some extent, I make these decisions when I review my lists and often, I simply choose what I am inspired to do.
This week is Thanksgiving week in the United States. Some people are working like crazy to clear their desks before the long weekend and some are already in “vacation mode”. If you are in the latter category, at work but finding yourself unable to get much done, go through your lists and look for low time/low energy activities you can do.
If you have “vacation brain” and don’t have a list of low energy tasks to dig through, or your list doesn’t inspire you to take action, check out this list of mindless, but productive tasks that inspired this post.
Or, if you’re like me, you’ll just catch up on your reading.
