Priorities and GTD
Priorities is something I hear many people talk about lately and it seems that some users are stuck in the traditional Priority model from other systems. I am not saying this is a bad thing because it may work for you, but just wanted to share why GTD's approach is different.
David Allen explains the Horizons of Focus in GTD and this is
the model used when determining your Priorities. GTD does not do
away with the traditional Priorities model but they are implemented
differently for a reason in GTD.
First let me explain the issues I have experienced with the traditional approach to Priorities before I found GTD. This may not be true for everyone, but it's one of the reasons why GTD went about it in a different way which I have learned to adopt and love.
I would have a list of task to do and would choose the Priority
based on several factors.
Top Priority:
The top priority was something my boss asked me to have done by
"Yesterday" or it is something I need to do by a particular meeting
or schedule that is coming fast.
Medium Priority:
These are task that have some impact on my life or work. It could
be a task that is holding something else up, a task that effects a
Project of some kind or a task that improves on something we
require daily.
Low Priority:
Task that need to be done but nobody is waiting on me to finish. It
does not impact my life or business in a serious level but has
enough value to merit an actionable task.
These are the 3 Priorities I used in the past and I could explain in several paragraphs why this does not always work. Instead I am going to describe a typical issue with using traditional priorities that GTD eliminated.
Why it did not work for me:
I have new task coming in daily. These new task fall into one of the 3 priority levels but there is one thing for sure. I always have new Top Level task coming in and many Medium level task. Since I am always working on my Top priority task first and then Medium, what ends up happening is that my Low level priorities never get a shot at completion. I think they are still actionable, but they simply get buried. Some of my Medium level task are also buried and come back to byte me later. This causes me to work late in order to make up for these. I simply felt buried in new incoming task and could not get things done.
The GTD Priority methodology:
Everything in GTD falls in what David Allen calls "The Horizons of Focus". I described them in simplistic form below.
50,000 = Life Purpose, Core Values.
40,000 = Vision.
30,000 = Measurable Goals
20,000 = Areas of Focus, Responsibilities
10,000 = Projects
Runway = Next Actions
You determine priorities in GTD by working your way from 50,000 to the Runway and decide what task needs your attention at the time. At the Runway level you can determine what to work on by Context, Time and Energy while considering how it lines up with your Horizons of Focus. David calls this the top down method. David also explains that the bottom up method is also used.
Some people work from 50,000 down to figure out what to do (Top
Down) and others work from the Runway up to 50,000 foot level
(Bottom Up). I am one of the Runway to 50,000 people simply because
it works best for me and I never seen an Airplane materialize in
the Sky before it had to take off. :-)
In a recent Podcast, David Allen suggest the Runway to 50,000 level for people who can think best in that direction.
Why am I saying all this? Because GTD approaches priorities differently than other systems. There is no hard code Priority of Top, Medium, Low or 1, 2, 3... or 1a, 1b.. 2a, 2b... etc.
In GTD you analyse your task by Context, Time and Energy to determine what needs to be done and how it lines up with your Horizons of Focus. This process is how you Prioritize your task in a dynamic way. Because of this process, I am now able to tackle my Middle and Low level task where I could not in the past. If I have 1 hour left in my work day and have little Energy left. I will tackle some shorter task with lower Energy requirements to keep myself productive. Trying to work on the Top level task that will take me about 3 hours of effort and a high Energy level is not wise in this example. I will start something I know I can't finish and I will probably make mistakes because my mental Energy is drained. Using the GTD way, I can tackle the shorter and lower energy level task before I leave and accomplish 2 or 3 of them. In the morning I can start that Top level task that I now have the time for and the Energy level for.
Dynamic Priorities in GTD has changed the way I work and how many things I can accomplish. Trying to work on the Top priority task in the example above would result in me starring at the screen like a Cow stares at a new fence for most of that last hour and not really getting anything done.
I understand not everyone implements GTD fully and you don't have too. But if we are going to add something like a Priority system that goes against the GTD methodology, I have to ask why. Nirvana aims to keep GTD simple but it's up to us to make GTD work and not the application. I don't need Nirvana to do what other systems have done with Priorities because Nirvana is based on GTD and Priorities are not handled that way.
I know many of you will have their own comments about this and I do respect each and every one of your perspectives. Just wanted to point out something that is not always obvious to people who try to practice GTD but don't understand how Priorities are handled.
This is a problem that even David Allen still tries to explain and teach people. It's hard to break away from old habits but GTD is about doing things differently with great success. No tool will ever do GTD for you.
Comments are currently closed for this discussion. You can start a new one.
2 Posted by roddyt on 26 Apr, 2010 05:21 PM
Well put Proximo. I think this acronym sums it up:
KISS
Roddy
P.S., I'm always in awe of your posts. It would take me a week to put that many words together :)
3 Posted by Terminado on 26 Apr, 2010 05:35 PM
Excellent presentation, Proximo. Traditional 1, 2, 3 priorities never worked for me because I got caught up in the mental debate about what each task should be, whether certain sub-tasks make the greater task have a higher priority, and how those sub-tasks affect other tasks and projects, and I had a mind like mud, not water. The flexibility of the in-the-moment, contextual approach of GTD that you so aptly describe is, by contrast, liberating and empowering.
A discussion of this issue and, indeed, all of GTD, is like a tennis match between our left- and right-brains. The best results occur when there is just enough structure and process and not too much feelings and intuition.
4 Posted by sunni.freyer on 26 Apr, 2010 06:29 PM
Proximo -- Good post. Thank you. One question came to mind while perusing your post. Do you use tags for time and energy? I am envisioning that you create a smart list using context, time and energy tags to display that task that you can perform in the, for example, one hour/low energy/biz situation. As I write this, I believe I recall that the "and" operator does not work (yet?) in nirvana when creating smart lists. Perhaps, though, my memory is incorrect. I hope so.
5 Posted by Terminado on 26 Apr, 2010 06:42 PM
nw-woman--
"and" works, but only in the order that the tags are associated with the tasks are listed; OR does not work yet, though. So you would need two smartlists to find, say, "Low" (for energy) and "15m" (for minutes). One would be [low 15m] and the other would be [15m low].
That's for now; we've been assured that there will eventually be a more robust system.
6 Posted by sunni.freyer on 26 Apr, 2010 06:50 PM
I don't understand "but only in the order that the tags are associated with the tasks are listed." Perhaps you might be able to reword?
I'm also taking away from your post that you use something like this: low, med, high for energy level and perhaps 15m, 30m, 60m, >60m for time expenditure?
7 Posted by Terminado on 26 Apr, 2010 06:54 PM
If your smart list says "low 15m" it will only find tasks that are tagged with those tags in THAT order. So you need a second smartlist to find those two tags in reverse order. At least that's what I've discovered.
8 Posted by sunni.freyer on 26 Apr, 2010 07:03 PM
Ahhhh. Now I understand. Thanks for the elaboration.
9 Posted by Proximo on 26 Apr, 2010 08:19 PM
Great question nw-woman.
As for right now, I am using Nirvana in a different way than I would when Areas of Responsibility are in place.
I use 3 main tags as my "Areas of Responsibility" or 20,000 foot level. I will list them below.
I then added very minimal contex tags that work for me such as.
I rather not clutter up my tags at this point, so I am keeping the Energy and Time information in my task details as Notes. It does not allow me to search as easily for them, but I manage them very well.
Here is what I am holding out for.
Areas of Responsibilities to be launched: This will allow me to remove the 3 first tags mentioned above.
Time and Energy to be a task related entry and not driven by tags. Not sure if Nirvana will do it this way or not, but I prefer not to have too many tags on my UI. If Nirvana implements this feature with tags, I hope they are smart tags than will expand with more options to reduce the number needed.
An example will be what "Things" uses from Cultured Code. Things uses a tag system that slides out to reveal sub-tag categories. An example would be a tag called "Energy" that when selected slides out to reveal High, Med and Low.
Again, I am not sure how Nirvana will implement it, but I would rather have it work as a task option and not a tag. This will still allow you to filter by the Energy and Time field but free up tags for better things. Either method can work. I will wait to see how it's done and then set my system up for it.
Smart list will also give us more options on sorting by multiple criteria but we will have to wait for their full release.
What I don't want is to view my Next list with 20+ tags on the top. I rather only use a minimal amount of tags to filter by the most important things.
Hope this makes sense.
10 Posted by sunni.freyer on 26 Apr, 2010 09:53 PM
Thank you for the edu. Helpful.
11 Posted by Elurven on 19 May, 2010 05:17 AM
Just a short note to the discussion on adding time and effort into the tasks.
In order not to spend too much time working out how long a task will take or the effort it requires, I have chosen to lump time and effort together in a tag called "E" followed by a number. "E1" would then signify "Effort 1", which means that the action tagged with this is a low effort action. E2 would signify a higher effort and so on. I suppose that three stages are enough 1=low, 2=medium, 3=high. But then again, normal should not need to be tagged at all. By using E1(, E2) and E3, I can sort by this tag and since I have already determined how much effort they would require, I do not need to go thorugh my entire next or today list in order to find actions that respond to my current energy level or time available.
(Priorities have also been discussed previously in this thread: http://help.nirvanahq.com/discussions/gtd/6-classification-help)
12 Posted by Proximo on 19 May, 2010 01:32 PM
@Elurven,
Time and Energy are very important and I do hope Nirvana adds the fields in the future. I always like to make things as simple as possible so I do like your idea.
I do have a few questions.
How do you determine the time a task will take?
Is E1 low energy and 15 minutes or less?
Is E2 medium energy and 1 hour or less?
I am interested on how you accomplish both with one tag. The reason I ask this is because some task may take me 2 hours to do, but they are very low energy. These type of task are my least favorite because a Monkey could do it, but it takes a long time to finish. I am basically brain dead while working on it. ( I am usually brain dead anyway)
Other task may take me 15 to 30 minutes to complete, but require high energy level due to the details required in getting it right. One example would be going over some Design Patent information. The total time to complete the task is not that long but it's extremely important that I get it right and I must have the right energy level to work on it.
Just interested in your input on this. Not sure if additional information on the tag could make it clear while keeping it simple.
example:
E1T1, E1T2 and E1T3
Energy Level 1 = low
Time 1 = 15 min or less
Time 2 = 1 hour or less
Time 3 = over 2 hours
Using this example a task tagged with E3T1 would be a High energy task but takes 15 min. or less to complete. I know this may be hard for some to understand, but many of these type of task are looking at in invoice to make sure we where charged correctly and that all the information is captured for the work we expected. May only take me 15 minutes or less but I better be paying attention with a good energy level or it will come back to haunt me. :-)
Thanks
13 Posted by Elurven on 19 May, 2010 01:53 PM
@Proximo
I never really thought about it that way actually. As so often before, you are of course right :-). I have not found that I have that many time consuming tasks that are low on effort though, since I have always equated high effort with long time. But I suppose a combination might work as you suggested.
I have to admit that I do not use theese tags with that much consistency, but rather ad-hoc once I see something that is very low on time and effort.
But I do believe that voluntary fields for time and effort may be good as suggested, since it is very easy to get caught up in the entire process of tagging. And since I have a tendency to procrastinate and spend too much time managing the system if it does not work the way I want it (I spent quite some time getting Thinking Rock to work the way that I wanted), I need a system that is easy and intuitive to use. Thus far, Nirvana is the best implementation of GTD that I have found and one of the main reasons is the ease of use.
On a completely unrelated note, it would be interesting to hear what other GTD or task management software that the Nirvana users have tried in the past (maybe on a separate thread). Other programs keep coming up in the forums (most notably Thinking Rock, Toodledo and Things).
14 Posted by Proximo on 19 May, 2010 02:20 PM
@Elurven,
I agree with you 100% on how an easy to use GTD system is what makes me productive. The less I need to mess with it the better.
With Nirvana, I have not been tagging my task for Time and Energy, but it is a very critical component of GTD and how you decided what to do. Since it's not easy at the moment, I opted not to mess with it and wait to see if they add this functionality.
Just yesterday I worked on a monkey task that took me over 3 hours to finish but required about 2 brain cells of effort. I was listening to podcast on my iPhone while working on this. :-)
Like you mentioned, not everyone has high energy task that take up little time but I am sure I am not the only one. I also believe that some people have low energy task that take a lot of time to complete. :-)
I would like to implement this in some way right now, but can't figure out something that will be easy to do and stay out of my way. I do like your idea and may use it with the additional T1, T2 and T3 concept. Not sure yet but I want to thank you for sharing it.
15 Posted by Vincent on 29 May, 2010 02:19 PM
Here is my tentative implementation of tags. I don't think the time(T1, T2) etc will work for me. I think instead I will do my tagging based on "mood"
It seems like the GTD heirarchy is this:
Conext(areas of focus) dictates what is even possible to do. In other words if I am at Work, I cannot do the task of: Washin my Dog, because that Context or Area of focus is for Home. So this is the first level.
The second level is priority/next actions. This are things my GTD system will tell me I must do next, IF I am in the right context.
Finally comes tagging. If I am in the right context, AND a task is next, AND I "feel" like doing it. I use the term "feel" because this will consider my energy level. I think "feel" will even include my time available. This is why I don't want to limit tagging to only Time related filtering, but instead how I "feel". If a task will take me 2 hours, and I was tagging by Tag/2h, I may have 2 hours available, but I really don't "feel" like doing a 2 hour task. So I think the very essence of tagging should be related to what I "feel" like doing. "Feel" will encompass my mood, time I feel like spending, etc.
I have thought about a few tags I may use, which might include the following:
Another thing I may use "spiritual" tag for may be to talk with the wife about some issue. My spiritual modo may have to be good in order to have a productive conversation. In other words, if I have a task to discuss with her why the mother-in-law should not stay at our house while in town, my context of being at Home may fit, it may be a next action, but my "spiritual" mood isn't up to par because I'm drained from office work.
My other tags(moods) may be:
Spiritual, Research, Cleaning, Leisure, Errands, Sleepy, Brainstorming
Keep in mind I have created the above tags based on my "mood". Sometimes I'm in a Cleaning mood, sometimes I am NOT in an Errand mood, and don't feel like leaving the house.
I'd like to get the input of others on this method. Proximo, thanks for your great input all over these forums. I just began with Nirvana last week, and previously used Omnifocus and OpenLoopz. I browsed the forums just reading your posts to figure out the best way to use Nirvana. Anyhow, all feedback welcome, let me know guys if this type of tagging implementation would be helpful to all?
I have not implement this tagging system as of yet, but will probably start today.
16 Posted by Proximo on 29 May, 2010 04:23 PM
@Vincent
Sounds like you found something that works for you and that is the
important thing.
I believe Nirvana needs to add the time, energy fields at the task
level because tags are not that great for this.
Smart list will then allow us to create list for these fields to help
filter our possible choices.
Just my opinion.
17 Posted by sim on 01 Jun, 2010 11:57 PM
Priorities are not used in GTD, however, there is much mentioned between how much time and energy we have to complete a task at a particular point of the day. Since that is the case, use priorities to make that measure.
For example, high energy and/or long hours, use the priority 'high' and that low energy and/or limited time, use priority 'low'.
If you are a visual person, probably the Mac version of priority (which has bars rather than numbers or exclamation marks) works better.
18 Posted by Proximo on 02 Jun, 2010 01:55 PM
@Sim,
Some of my task are High Energy/Short time allocation while others are Low Energy/Long time allocations.
I also have High Energy/Long time allocations and Low Energy/Short Time allocation.
If I had an Energy and Time field added to my task details. I can use the GTD method of prioritizing what to work on based on these added fields and stay away from the High, Medium, Low trap that causes other systems to fail.
Just my opinion. :-)
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 01 Feb, 2011 04:04 PM.