GTD, FC and Priorities semantics?

[dserr]

Doesn't your calendar do the sequencing for you? Take this example... I knew when I walked in to work at 8:00 this morning that my main priority was to take a bill downtown to be paid. It had to be done today, but at no particular time. I had a 10:30am meeting and at least 2 other 'top priority' items that had to get done today. I just added 'Pay bill' to my calendar at 9am to be sure it gone done. Then I follow the sequence of my calendar. Two of my other 'priorities' involved being online to place an order. Since I always check my email and NA lists first thing in the morning, I placed those two tasks on my calendar for 8:30am. I also needed to stop and get gas and run by the ATM before the out-of-town meeting at 10:30, so I added those tasks to my calendar at 9am while I was out and about. I completed all my tasks, but not necessarily in priority order. I did them in the order that best fit in to my hard landscape. So the calendar set the sequence. Maybe I am overusing the calendar... Just a thought...

My 2 cents:

One word that has not been used once in this discussion...efficiency! drummergirl wreaks of it. Step back and think about how to use your time wisely. Then apply that as simply as possible to your system and in a way that makes you effective. Efficiency and effectiveness may be mutually exclusive, but added together they equal productivity.

Processing all of our stuff means making decisions about that stuff. One decision may be when to do it. If that strikes you as appropriate for a given action item, schedule it in your calendar. For me, the test is: what is the most productive (efficient + effective) way to handle that item.

I think there is a lot of paralysis by analysis going on here. Does prioritization really having anything to do with scheduling NA's? Should we care about urgency if a NA is not important? Sequencing? KISS!

I think we're all better off focusing on increasing our energy and our capacity to do more stuff rather than getting caught up on how to list all of our NA's and projects. Settle on a simple system, remember to delegate, and continue to learn and adjust.

Dean

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Daily Task-List = Task List created Daily, like an Agenda.

Andrew,

thank you! My "Daily Task-List" is indeed a kind of agenda. The contexts for the next actions lists are determined by location, tool or person, that you need to do the work, right? So my daily task-list could be called an "@ focused me" list whereas "focused me" is the person I need to be with to do all the stuff on my list. :wink:

Why am I doing this? Because I like to work project-orientated not context-orientated. Okay, I admit, sometimes it's best to "batch-process" my phone calls or my errands or repotting my plants. But often it's easier for me to change the context (e.g. from @ computer to @ phone and back, or from @ computer to @ meeting and back) than to change the focus to an other project at that day or hour. I do this to keep up the focus on the project. Altough I have much to do all day long , I have only very few appointments.

Rainer