In a connected world where information and opportunities grow exponentially, everyone senses to need to filter out more than ever. Elimination has become a popular coping mechanism. Focus on the big stuff, and don’t sweat the small stuff.
I’ll argue that one way of not sweating the big stuff is actually handling the small stuff.
Virtually all time management systems implicitly ignore low-priority tasks — totally. Read a book that advocates priority codes or matrix systems, and try to find any mention of when to do “unimportant” tasks. Running an errand is apparently too undignified to fit in the scheme of things, at least to management consultants.
This begs a fundamental question. Why put an action on your list or calendar if you’re not going to do it?
Why write it down if you’re not supposed to do it? Wouldn’t the 10 seconds spend thinking about and writing down something you’re not going to do be better applied to something you are going to do? Why have it on the list to review later and decide not to do it again? If you’re not going “to do” it, why does it belong on a “to do” list? One time management expert argued in a recent lecture that if a task falls in the unimportant-but-due-soon quadrant of the triage matrix, you should do the important-but-not-due tasks first. I think it’s better to be up front with myself and decide whether I’m going to do a task at all, stop tracking it altogether, or place it in a category to reevaluate at a later date — tracked separately from my action items.
Managing Attention Rather Than Time
Treating time as the fundamental currency of productivity is useful up to a point of declining returns, beyond which it becomes a tool for procrastination. The reality is that there’s never enough time for the things in life that are truly important. Spending time with family and friends, building a career or business, and being active in your community could always take precedence over other endeavors. There’s always something more important that anyone could be doing at this moment than reading this sentence.
The main problem with ignoring small stuff is that it ignores the claim small stuff has on our attention. Every open loop, no matter how big or small, is a claim on attention.
Consider an email inbox. Most people would react more favorably to an inbox with seven line items in it than 70. Even though the contents haven’t been examined, the volume of email has more impact on the perceived workload than the potential commitments embedded in them. Even when everything in the inbox has been examined, the volume carries more psychic weight. When people complain about their email workload, they’re far more likely to mention how many messages they have to deal with each day than the typical complexity of each message. Normal email users seem to understand the phenomenology of mental RAM better than most time management authorities.
Allowing unimportant items to pile up on an action list diffuses the integrity of the list as a focus tool. Things are on a list because they can’t be done simultaneously, not because they can’t be done at all. Action lists are for things you intend to take action on; otherwise they belong on another list with a different intention as its heading (e.g. Someday/Maybe), or no list at all.
By focusing on priorities over logistics, it would make more sense to spend 10 minutes chipping away at a business plan that will take hours to write than completing a phone call. But completing the phone call is one less open loop to manage, and that much more focus available for the business plan. Repeatedly deciding not to do unimportant tasks is like not thinking about pink elephants — it still requires mental resources to make the decision.
Try this experiment: the next time you find yourself procrastinating on an important task, find the easiest thing on your list that can be completed in a few minutes, do it, and see if you feel more capable of handling the important task or less. Some people call this productive procrastination. I call it productivity. After all, any action you decide to do is procrastination of everything else that, by default, you’re decided not to do.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Vered
// May 23, 2008 at 1:43 am
I do it all the time - but I always assumed it was b/c of my short attention span. I always thought that by tackling the small stuff first I am being lazy and unproductive. It felt good to read your theory.
2 Tommy
// May 23, 2008 at 8:01 am
Interesting point of view even if I cannot say I agree. My first thoughts are that you prioritize poorly and have a very different definition of “the list” than me. Anyway, here are my two cents worth.
What is the definition of “unimportant”? What is the purpose and scope of your action list?
To me a prioritized list is the natural approach to handling multiple items. One can only do so much and the available energy needs to be put on the most important - is this then something that is most important because it’ll give you a good feeling, money, a step towards a goal you’ve set or something else that you use when prioritizing the items on the list.
I’d say that the reason why you’d list items is because then you have a record of it, not only in your brain that will occupy you while you are doing other things. So by putting it down on a list you free up resources, because you can let it go and put your attention on something else.
Further, how can you at the point of thinking about something know if you’ll do this in the future or not? Can you see into the future? Take a look at how Scrum (Agile software development methodology) uses the Product Backlog. This backlog is a list of tasks that are split into a A- and a B-list. The A-list contains only a small subset of things in priority order; the B-list has the rest. Hence, your focus and attention is on the A-list items, but you continuously revisit the backlog to see if you need to reprioritize or you run out of A-list items so you need to get a new A-list from the B-list.
Eventually the “small unimportant” items you talk about will surface and be done, because you run out of more important things or you just reprioritize at a later stage.
In my opinion, the action list should take into account a broad range of variables when you prioritize items and then the small and “unimportant” things will be seen in another light.
3 Andre Kibbe
// May 23, 2008 at 4:09 pm
To me a prioritized list is the natural approach to handling multiple items. One can only do so much and the available energy needs to be put on the most important
If time was the only variable, with no other considerations, I’d agree. Let’s go back to the example of spending a window of 10 minutes on a phone call versus spending it on a business plan. The difference is that with the phone call, you’ve actually closed an open loop — you’ve completed something. A 10-minute window spent working on a business plan, though more important, not only provides no closure, but would barely provide the immersion time necessary to work productively on a high-focus task. This is where I think elevating priorities over logistics is self-deception. It’s a way to feel important without actually accomplishing anything.
I’d say that the reason why you’d list items is because then you have a record of it, not only in your brain that will occupy you while you are doing other things. So by putting it down on a list you free up resources, because you can let it go and put your attention on something else.
You’re right. My only qualifier is putting items on the lists that map to the intentionality behind them. If I put something on an action list it’s because I’m actually going to take action on it at the first opportunity; otherwise I put it on my Someday/Maybe list.
It’s easier for me to work from an @Computer list with 13 items on it than one with 33 items on it where 20 of them are uncommitted. I’m a big proponent of maintaining the integrity of an action list by reserving it for active commitments exclusively. Not only is the shorter list less visually overwhelming, but I take it more seriously when it’s free of tasks that I don’t take seriously.
Further, how can you at the point of thinking about something know if you’ll do this in the future or not? Can you see into the future?
Action lists have nothing to do with prediction, only intentionality. You can resolve to go to work in the morning despite that fact that some act of God might disrupt your plan. On the other hand, a prioritized list can be invalidated with one phone call from your boss. Needless to say, we’re not vegetables, and can always adapt to change. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with sorting lists by priority as long as the person using them isn’t as inflexible as the lists themselves.
4 Duff
// May 23, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Interesting thoughts, Andre.
I often do the unimportant tasks while procrastinating the more important, mostly because of the anxiety of having a long list of things to do.
I’ve also watched a number of “priority-focused” people work, and they often do the unimportant things without regard for whether they are truly important or not. It’s as if they need to think of themselves as focused on the most important things, but they are doing things just as intuitively as everyone else.
I also totally agree that if you aren’t going to do it, just forget it instead of writing it down! I often find when I review my lists that I have many items like this.
5 Nightlord
// May 23, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Very nice article and comments
I find the GTD way of looking at “what to do” very logical and it has been working for me in last two years. Andre’s idea is inline with this.
Afterall there are other factors besides the priority of tasks that usually have a stronger influence on what we choose to do. Context is the obvious first one, but I also think available time and available energy are pretty helpful in deciding what I do. All three of these are more important than the priorities of the 20 tasks that can be in my to do lists.
As far as I can see people do use the context in this decision (they have to) and sometimes the available time as well. But people rarely use the available energy as a deciding factor.
Only after these three factors I look at the priorities. And I think at that point we meet the dilemma that this article is really talking about. Given that I am in the right context, I have enough time and energy and I have two tasks where one is of higher priority while the other is lets say the last action that finishes a project or maybe a stand alone action.
That situation I think needs to be answered intuitively most of the time by the person. In order to make that decision more algorithmic I sometimes use my weekly reviews indirectly. I look at certain actions and projects and see how long they have been in the action list or an active project. If something stays in my action list for more than two weeks I consider that as a sign of procrastination and force myself to make a decision about it. I either consider making that item a Someday/Maybe item (if I am not doing it maybe it is not an active item), or I consider it “high priority” from then on and whenever I have a chance of doing it I will do it.
6 Charlie Gilkey | Productive Flourishing
// May 26, 2008 at 7:51 pm
This is a great article, Andre. I think your factoring in attention as a variable in productivity selection matrices is right on point - I tend to think in terms of focus rather than attention, but I think we’re saying the same thing. The clear, focused mind is a product of not having other things kicking around while you’re working on other tasks - so it does indeed make more sense to work on the “low priority” or “unimportant” tasks if that’s what helps you achieve focus.
The lingering question that I have is whether priority and importance is in fact a variable of attention/focus. It’s inchoate at this point, but I’ll chew on it for a while.
7 Andre Kibbe
// May 27, 2008 at 2:58 am
The lingering question that I have is whether priority and importance is in fact a variable of attention/focus. It’s inchoate at this point, but I’ll chew on it for a while.
That’s a question I’ve been chewing on for a long time myself. There might be a dissonance between our experientially felt sense of what’s important and our socially internalized code. That’s one of the reasons I tend to use the word atttention rather that focus. When we do a mind sweep, for example, we’re turning our focus to what has our attention. This is one of the underappreciated facets of GTD: consciously collecting everything in our sphere or attention so that we can focus on it.
This is one of my objections to the admonition to “be proactive.” It emphasizes an image of the individual as an actor rather than a responder of feeler. But we need inner attunement to ensure action that has meaning, and not just motion.
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