Discussion Forum > Should we bother prioritizing our work?
These have always been Mark Forster's advice. Don't prioritize, don't do Covey's matrix. Divide things into Will Do and (erase everything else, so there's really only one list). Now since everything is Will Do, it will get done and order doesn't matter. Or, following the Autofocus method, you just put everything on a list, and you just do things. Things you don't choose to do fall off and get dismissed. It's sort of an intuition-driven Will/Won't separator.
He also advises against sorting by Urgency, because if you do all the urgent stuff, then the stuff that wasn't urgent falls behind and becomes Urgent. Better to work on everything that's important, at a time that's suitable to each and avoid anything becoming urgent at all.
To me there are some things that are more valuable than others, and completing these things does not mean these are done. Completing these things means more of these things come up which are also generally more valuable. I'm talking business. The more and better you serve the $1000 clients, the more $1000 clients you get. You will still work on the $100 clients, but you may prefer to spend twice the effort on the former because it's better that way.
You could say time with family is the most important thing, and 18 hrs a day is better than 1 hr a day. It's true, but it doesn't work that way. The first hour is by far the most valuable, and there's a balance somewhere between 0 and 18 that is ideal for your average day.
This means, ranking tasks A to E doesn't make sense, because it varies. It means you must use judgment to weigh how much time you should spend on this or that. If you can do that on the fly using these Autofocus systems that's great. If you plan out your day based on things you know need doing, and rebalance your efforts on a day by day basis, great.
I don't have a final answer; there are different ways, but the main thing is to keep aware of what matters, and to keep doing the things that matter most from day to day.
He also advises against sorting by Urgency, because if you do all the urgent stuff, then the stuff that wasn't urgent falls behind and becomes Urgent. Better to work on everything that's important, at a time that's suitable to each and avoid anything becoming urgent at all.
To me there are some things that are more valuable than others, and completing these things does not mean these are done. Completing these things means more of these things come up which are also generally more valuable. I'm talking business. The more and better you serve the $1000 clients, the more $1000 clients you get. You will still work on the $100 clients, but you may prefer to spend twice the effort on the former because it's better that way.
You could say time with family is the most important thing, and 18 hrs a day is better than 1 hr a day. It's true, but it doesn't work that way. The first hour is by far the most valuable, and there's a balance somewhere between 0 and 18 that is ideal for your average day.
This means, ranking tasks A to E doesn't make sense, because it varies. It means you must use judgment to weigh how much time you should spend on this or that. If you can do that on the fly using these Autofocus systems that's great. If you plan out your day based on things you know need doing, and rebalance your efforts on a day by day basis, great.
I don't have a final answer; there are different ways, but the main thing is to keep aware of what matters, and to keep doing the things that matter most from day to day.
January 6, 2020 at 22:53 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
A great post, MrDone.
"I find it just too much hard work and time consuming to prioritize tasks. Keeping track of deadlines is really quite a challenge especially with new ones coming in and changing priorities."
It's also a way to avoid doing things while pretending that all the fiddling is in fact getting started on them. Tracking genuine deadlines is fine; creating artificial deadlines and endlessly colouring and categorising and labelling and grouping stuff is just mind-numbing. As you say new stuff comes in and messes it all up anyway. New systems always feel good because they reflect life perfectly at that exact point, and then they diverge and we "fall off the wagon" and try a new system. We've all been there. I've described it in the past as pushing peas around your plate instead of eating your food.
"Instead, what has worked much better for me is to ignore all priorities and simply work through every task without any thought of importance. Little and often principle is ideal. My theory is that in the long run all the time saved by being 100% productive will get tasks up to date so nothing is ever urgent."
I completely agree. Just get going. Keep going, finish and look back at it from a position of completion. I used to be terrible for getting things nearly finished and then thinking "Well it's nearly done now, I can finish any time, I'll have a break from it now" and ending up with everything unfinished and needing to be reinvented all over again. Utterly draining, mentally. Now I like to ask myself what I want to get finished this week (as opposed to what I want to get started on) and then get going on those with the completion being the focus all the way through.
"I find it just too much hard work and time consuming to prioritize tasks. Keeping track of deadlines is really quite a challenge especially with new ones coming in and changing priorities."
It's also a way to avoid doing things while pretending that all the fiddling is in fact getting started on them. Tracking genuine deadlines is fine; creating artificial deadlines and endlessly colouring and categorising and labelling and grouping stuff is just mind-numbing. As you say new stuff comes in and messes it all up anyway. New systems always feel good because they reflect life perfectly at that exact point, and then they diverge and we "fall off the wagon" and try a new system. We've all been there. I've described it in the past as pushing peas around your plate instead of eating your food.
"Instead, what has worked much better for me is to ignore all priorities and simply work through every task without any thought of importance. Little and often principle is ideal. My theory is that in the long run all the time saved by being 100% productive will get tasks up to date so nothing is ever urgent."
I completely agree. Just get going. Keep going, finish and look back at it from a position of completion. I used to be terrible for getting things nearly finished and then thinking "Well it's nearly done now, I can finish any time, I'll have a break from it now" and ending up with everything unfinished and needing to be reinvented all over again. Utterly draining, mentally. Now I like to ask myself what I want to get finished this week (as opposed to what I want to get started on) and then get going on those with the completion being the focus all the way through.
January 7, 2020 at 5:11 |
Chris
Chris
Mr. Done,
Your post and your transformation form Mr. Backlog to Mr. Done really has me thinking about how I approach my work and Mark's systems. It has led me to try something new which I will report back on if it yields promise.
Your post and your transformation form Mr. Backlog to Mr. Done really has me thinking about how I approach my work and Mark's systems. It has led me to try something new which I will report back on if it yields promise.
January 9, 2020 at 15:49 |
vegheadjones
vegheadjones
MrDone
I tried using the method of doing things in the order they came in (FIFO) long, long ago - while I was working as the bursar of a college back in the 80s..
The problem, as I very quickly found out, is that in that sort of position one has a huge number of calls on one's time and they have vastly different urgency and time requirements.
The critical factor in a FIFO system is the turn-round time of the list, i.e. how long it is before a task entered at the end of the list reaches the beginning of the active list and gets actioned. If that time is longer than the turn-round time of your most urgent tasks, some form of prioritising by urgency is going to be needed.
Introducing urgency priorities then increases the amount of time before the lower priority tasks are actioned.
Of course a FIFO system will work absolutely fine if all one's work has completion dates which are further away than the turn-over time for your list.
Since you've not only kept up with your work but also eliminated considerable backlogs using FIFO, I'm assuming that nearly all your work is comparatively non-urgent. You mentioned completing all new tasks "within a day or two of arriving". That would also suggest your tasks are small enough to be capable of being done within a day or two.
It's absolutely great that you've found a solution which fits the conditions of your work. The problem is that it doesn't seem realistic to apply it to people with more varied work loads in terms of urgency and length of time needed for individual tasks.
And I also totally agree with Chris that prioritising and using pretty colours etc is a complete waste of time. As Alan points out, I've never recommended any of those things. All my systems have been directed at enabling people with very varied workloads to be able to respond intuitively to factors of urgency, time requirement, shifting demands, etc. without having to waste time on such things.
I tried using the method of doing things in the order they came in (FIFO) long, long ago - while I was working as the bursar of a college back in the 80s..
The problem, as I very quickly found out, is that in that sort of position one has a huge number of calls on one's time and they have vastly different urgency and time requirements.
The critical factor in a FIFO system is the turn-round time of the list, i.e. how long it is before a task entered at the end of the list reaches the beginning of the active list and gets actioned. If that time is longer than the turn-round time of your most urgent tasks, some form of prioritising by urgency is going to be needed.
Introducing urgency priorities then increases the amount of time before the lower priority tasks are actioned.
Of course a FIFO system will work absolutely fine if all one's work has completion dates which are further away than the turn-over time for your list.
Since you've not only kept up with your work but also eliminated considerable backlogs using FIFO, I'm assuming that nearly all your work is comparatively non-urgent. You mentioned completing all new tasks "within a day or two of arriving". That would also suggest your tasks are small enough to be capable of being done within a day or two.
It's absolutely great that you've found a solution which fits the conditions of your work. The problem is that it doesn't seem realistic to apply it to people with more varied work loads in terms of urgency and length of time needed for individual tasks.
And I also totally agree with Chris that prioritising and using pretty colours etc is a complete waste of time. As Alan points out, I've never recommended any of those things. All my systems have been directed at enabling people with very varied workloads to be able to respond intuitively to factors of urgency, time requirement, shifting demands, etc. without having to waste time on such things.
January 13, 2020 at 11:09 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Hi Mark, thanks for your comments.
Yes this whole prioritizing or not prioritizing is certainly a dilemma for me and I guess others as well. I go round in circles on what is the best approach.
Sometime I feel I need to prioritize when tasks build up, but on the other I just want to blast thought all the work. I have gone with the blast through for the moment.
My work is probably quite similar to most people. I get lots of quick tasks and also some long tasks that might take a few day’s work and there are ongoing projects that might take months. All with varying deadlines, but the usual theme – if left too long then at some point something goes wrong. To be honest, I find it hard to keep track of the deadlines as there are so many.
To get round the problem of long tasks/projects, I break those down into quite a few smaller sub tasks and then feed them in from time to time. That way I’m not too overloaded with too many long tasks.
So I suppose I’m prioritizing in the sense by deferring some of the work until when I have capacity to do it.
I think that is the dilemma – how does one balance all the urgent and not urgent tasks at any particular point in time. Especially as a week later things no doubt will have changed. I lose track too easily.
For me what has worked is getting super up to date and staying there.
Also I notice there are people around me that always up to date and well organized. I trust those people more to get things done. It is noticeable. There are others who are patchy on doing things - they might do things straightaway or it might get done later. For me the fast up to date workers are more reliable and likely to get promotion or trusted to do the higher value work. This difference might be down to prioritizing or not, or maybe their ability to just get things done. It would be interesting to know. Best to be in the get it done quickly camp for long term career prospects….
I have got some thoughts on balancing short and long tasks, I might post that later.
Yes this whole prioritizing or not prioritizing is certainly a dilemma for me and I guess others as well. I go round in circles on what is the best approach.
Sometime I feel I need to prioritize when tasks build up, but on the other I just want to blast thought all the work. I have gone with the blast through for the moment.
My work is probably quite similar to most people. I get lots of quick tasks and also some long tasks that might take a few day’s work and there are ongoing projects that might take months. All with varying deadlines, but the usual theme – if left too long then at some point something goes wrong. To be honest, I find it hard to keep track of the deadlines as there are so many.
To get round the problem of long tasks/projects, I break those down into quite a few smaller sub tasks and then feed them in from time to time. That way I’m not too overloaded with too many long tasks.
So I suppose I’m prioritizing in the sense by deferring some of the work until when I have capacity to do it.
I think that is the dilemma – how does one balance all the urgent and not urgent tasks at any particular point in time. Especially as a week later things no doubt will have changed. I lose track too easily.
For me what has worked is getting super up to date and staying there.
Also I notice there are people around me that always up to date and well organized. I trust those people more to get things done. It is noticeable. There are others who are patchy on doing things - they might do things straightaway or it might get done later. For me the fast up to date workers are more reliable and likely to get promotion or trusted to do the higher value work. This difference might be down to prioritizing or not, or maybe their ability to just get things done. It would be interesting to know. Best to be in the get it done quickly camp for long term career prospects….
I have got some thoughts on balancing short and long tasks, I might post that later.
January 13, 2020 at 17:07 |
MrDone
MrDone
MrDone,
Thanks for giving a bit more detail. I'll be interested in reading your thoughts on short and long tasks.
Thanks for giving a bit more detail. I'll be interested in reading your thoughts on short and long tasks.
January 13, 2020 at 17:10 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Hi Mark, here is a quick version of what I have been doing for a while. Hope it makes sense: -
I have all my tasks in a long list. All my task are in emails so they are effectively all in date received order, but I guess the principle can apply to any bunch of tasks you want to work through. E.g. a pile of post, handwritten todo list etc.
1. Each day I work though all my inbox emails on a top down first in first out basis, but only working on the quick, easy and urgent tasks first.
2. When I come across an email that can be done later, I move it to a 2nd email folder.
3. When all the first emails are cleared, I then work through the 2nd folder, but on an oldest basis first -LIFO
I think the benefits are that I quickly get the number of tasks down each day so I can see where I am. It means I spend part of the day working on everything new that comes in. Then for the rest of the day I got a sort of scheduled list of things to work through that are not so urgent and they usually get cleared in a day or two. If they are really long tasks or part of a project, then I create a new set of sub tasks – I email myself them as a list of action points and they also go through the 1-3 process above.
It is quite simple and I suppose similar to simple scanning with standing out principle, but it is quite a specific structured process.
I have all my tasks in a long list. All my task are in emails so they are effectively all in date received order, but I guess the principle can apply to any bunch of tasks you want to work through. E.g. a pile of post, handwritten todo list etc.
1. Each day I work though all my inbox emails on a top down first in first out basis, but only working on the quick, easy and urgent tasks first.
2. When I come across an email that can be done later, I move it to a 2nd email folder.
3. When all the first emails are cleared, I then work through the 2nd folder, but on an oldest basis first -LIFO
I think the benefits are that I quickly get the number of tasks down each day so I can see where I am. It means I spend part of the day working on everything new that comes in. Then for the rest of the day I got a sort of scheduled list of things to work through that are not so urgent and they usually get cleared in a day or two. If they are really long tasks or part of a project, then I create a new set of sub tasks – I email myself them as a list of action points and they also go through the 1-3 process above.
It is quite simple and I suppose similar to simple scanning with standing out principle, but it is quite a specific structured process.
January 13, 2020 at 17:35 |
MrDone
MrDone
MrDone:
Ah... that's actually a bit different from the strict FIFO system which I understood you were using. Funnily enough it's the exact method I use to process my emails and my paper in-tray and it is indeed very effective for those. I don't think I'd want to do it for other tasks though, as I find Simple Scanning more flexible.
Ah... that's actually a bit different from the strict FIFO system which I understood you were using. Funnily enough it's the exact method I use to process my emails and my paper in-tray and it is indeed very effective for those. I don't think I'd want to do it for other tasks though, as I find Simple Scanning more flexible.
January 13, 2020 at 21:53 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Oh yes I do tinker a bit!
I like fifo very much as I feel in control but it does have flaws if I can’t keep up.
Hence the inclusion of ensuring older tasks get processed.
I agree simple scanning has a broader scope as it handles prioritising well.
I do like to try different things and I’m still searching for the perfect system...
I like fifo very much as I feel in control but it does have flaws if I can’t keep up.
Hence the inclusion of ensuring older tasks get processed.
I agree simple scanning has a broader scope as it handles prioritising well.
I do like to try different things and I’m still searching for the perfect system...
January 13, 2020 at 22:42 |
MrDone
MrDone
However, I have come to the conclusion that may not be the right approach in the long run.
I find it just too much hard work and time consuming to prioritize tasks. Keeping track of deadlines is really quite a challenge especially with new ones coming in and changing priorities.
Instead, what has worked much better for me is to ignore all priorities and simply work through every task without any thought of importance. Little and often principle is ideal. My theory is that in the long run all the time saved by being 100% productive will get tasks up to date so nothing is ever urgent.
For years I have worked with a backlog. But for most of 2019 I had no backlog. I’m able to do every new task in a day or two of it arriving. Perfect - it really has been that simple. Nobody chases me for anything so I really am working at maximum efficiency. I can quickly see if I am taking on too much and I can delegate or say no.
Maybe our real goal should be getting right up to date with no backlog and maintaining it. We should all review the time we spend organizing our tasks and think what effect that would have if the time was spent on actually doing tasks.
I do get tempted to go back to prioritizing tasks when things get a bit hectic, but I resist that and just go back to working through it all as quickly as possible.