Tools for Thought

An aspect of GTD that some find disappointing is the lack of a hard, fast rule for prioritizing tasks. There’s no “most important task,” no “ABC” code, no 2 x 2 matrix; only the advice to “trust your heart” or “follow your intuition.” It seems ironic, given GTD’s thoroughly systematic approach to collecting, tracking and reviewing actions and projects.

There may not be a rule, but there is a set of criteria you can apply to filter out inefficient options from the decision making process — think of them as “elimination rounds.” The four criteria are context, time, energy and priority.

Context

When thinking about what to do next, the first question to ask is: What can you actually do? Thinking about doing web design when you’re not near a computer isn’t an activity worth spending much time on. Thinking of doing something while lacking the tools to do it is simply idling. What you can do define the very next action at the computer that would make the overly general activity of “web design” actionable: sketch layout, resize photos, or some other concrete task.

Let’s suppose that not being at a computer, in this case, means sitting in a train station. There don’t appear to be many options, but since you’re in the habit of reviewing your @Calls and @Anywhere lists in situations like these, you see that you still need to call Sandy to get the details about the sofa she’s selling on Craigslist. Five minutes later, you’ve talked to her and have arranged to stop by her place to see the sofa in person.

Notice that the context was the trigger, not your mood or memory. You simply let the external situation determine what options were available rather than waiting to be in the mood to get around to the call or hoping that you would remember to make it. That’s being productively lazy (a good thing).

Time

You’re reviewing a list of things you can do in your current context, say @Office, so it’s a given that you can do them. What’s the best thing you can do given the time you have available? If you know you have to go to a meeting in eight minutes, choosing to read a long contact that would really need considerably more time to focus on is not a good use of the next eight minutes. Watering the plants, something that’s never “important” until the plants die, might be a better option.

But suppose the meeting is in 90 minutes, and you have no other external commitments between now and then. Instead of finishing a bunch of minutiae on your list, this might be the time to plow through that contract. It’s generally more strategic to use longer blocks of time for high-focus tasks, and shorter blocks for rote tasks.

Energy

You’re in the right context and you have a good idea which tasks are suited to the time available. Now the question is: Which task among these to I have the energy to execute effectively? This might seem like a question for slackers, but it’s really a productivity assessment.

Just because you have the time to read a contract doesn’t mean you’ll do it effectively when you’ve just been through the ringer with your boss. Your eyes might be on the document, but your mind is elsewhere. 45 minutes spent staring at the contract when distracted might be equivalent to 15 minutes of undistracted reading. That’s 30 minutes of activity that will have to be repeated later. Logging time in order to feel productive is busyness, not productivity. When attention is in short supply, switch to more mechanical tasks.

Priority

Once you’ve determined that you’re in the right place, have the right time and the right energy to accomplish any one of several tasks, the next question to ask is: Which one of these things would have the most impact? You’ve already narrowed down your options with the previous questions, so it’s likely that the priority choice at this point is a no-brainer. The choice may not be easy, but it’s probably simple.

Rules versus principles

It is absolutely not required that you follow this framework when choosing what to do next. Context, time, energy and priority only comprise a hierarchy of efficiency. There’s no rule that states you need to restrict yourself to doing computer-related tasks when you’re at a computer, but there is a general principle that there’s less effort involved when working within your resources. You can always choose to get to a computer if the task is a priority, but having context and other criteria in mind forces you to make that judgment call consciously.

(Photo credit: Redvers)

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