Urgency: the natural way to prioritize?
Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 17:48 Ever since Charles Hummel wrote his classic 1967 essay The Tyranny of the Urgent, urgency has had a bad press in the time management world. Received time management wisdom has long been that prioritizing should be by importance, with urgency as a side-show at best. We’re all by now familiar with Stephen Covey’s Four Quadrants, which gives Important two of the “good” quadrants while Urgent is only allowed one “good” quadrant and then only because it shares it with Important.
The questions I have are “Does Prioritizing by Urgency deserve its bad reputation?” and its corollary “Is Prioritizing by Importance all that it’s cracked up to be?”
If you construct a To-Do list in which all the tasks relate to your commitments (and every to-do list should be constructed on that basis), then everything on that list ultimately has to be done. You have, in other words, to have the intention to meet the specifications that go with each of your commitments. If you don’t have that intention, it’s not a commitment. And if it’s not a commitment it shouldn’t be on your to-do list.
Having accepted that everything on your to-do list has to be done, then the easiest and most direct way of getting through the list would be a simple First In First Out method. You do the list in the order in which tasks get written on the list. Importance makes no difference to the order, because if everything has to be done everything is equally important.
Of course we all know that this FIFO method wouldn’t work, and the reason it wouldn’t work is because tasks have different degrees of urgency. Urgency is what makes it necessary for us to do one particular task before another regardless of where it’s written on the list.
Urgency is in fact the natural way to prioritize. We do things first because they need to be done first. The farmer sows the seed and later the crop appears. At one time sowing becomes urgent and at another reaping. There is no possible way of saying that sowing is more important than reaping or vice versa.
Why then does prioritizing by urgency have such a bad press? I think there are two reasons:
The first is that people tend to think of the degree of urgency a task has in terms of when the task needs to be finished, when in fact the urgency relates to when the task needs to be started. This misconception is one reason why Prioritizing by Urgency is so often equated with deadline-chasing.
The second is that in the complications of modern life people very rarely do actually prioritize by urgency. They only start to prioritize by urgency when their other methods, or lack of them, have failed. The result is the same as in the first reason: deadline-chasing.
Reader Comments (37)
Can you share any thoughts about how you think about and manage urgency? When you write a given task down on your to-do list, do you stop and think about when it needs to be _started_, and choose column 1 or 2 on that basis? If so, how do you deal with tasks whose duration you don't know but whose deadline you do?
Very interesting point, Mark, one that is validated by my current work. You see, I work currently as a dialysis patient care technician, and this occupation is RULED by correctly starting the right task at the right moment. You see, patients have specific but varied lengths of time to do his or her dialysis treatment, and starting and ending treatment for patients are very time consuming and technically challenging, but there are three shifts of patients in a day to use the same dialysis machines. Therefore starting times are very crucial, or your schedule will fall apart. I am starting to see how my experience in dialysis can be used to help me in being more productive, which is why I have made this dictum:
"Know what you want; Prepare for what you want; Want what you want; Enjoy what you wanted."
Is the Autofocus list a to-do list?
I wasn't actually writing this in the context of Autofocus or Superfocus. I was writing it in the context of the Final Version.
- I agree only commitments should be on a todo list. You still need somewhere to record those things that you might like to do (what David Allen calls "Someday-Maybe"), but that does not have to be on the same list as commitments.
- It's difficult to see how those things you would like to do, and will do when you feel like it, fit in. Maybe they should not be on the todo list at all. This is different from things like improving skill on a musical instrument (if I'm honest I need to get that on a todo list to make sure i do the practice needed). It's more like reading, which is something I do voluntarily and will fill in gaps in time with reading, but don't feel it needs to be on a todo list. Not sure I'm expressing myself very well here, I hope people can understand.
I'm not keen on Someday/Maybes being on the list, but I think there is a difference between a Someday/Maybe and something which you are genuinely trying to decide whether to do or not. In that case your commitment is to investigate the validity of the task/project and that can go on the list.
I don't have a problem with a "thing I would like to do and will do when I feel like it". Notice the words "will do". Again it's different from a Someday/Maybe because you have committed to doing it. The only question is "when?". What degree of urgency does it have? At the moment, zero. But when you feel like doing it, it becomes urgent.
Most people don't want to live their entire lives from getting up to going to bed off a to-do list, so unstructured activities like reading fit naturally into the down time.
My definition of "urgent" would relate to the amount of slack in the plan. So if I have to spend an afternoon drafting a report that needs to be out for this weekend, it's urgent right this minute. If it needs to be out for next weekend, it isn't.
Generally, as the slack gets squeezed out, so does your room for manouevre, which means that risk goes up.
I loved the counter-intuitive advice in DIT to focus on the less urgent projects to prevent everything becoming urgent.
But if we are to be driven by urgency, I hope there will be a mechanism to trigger action while we still have enough slack. In fact, one measure of control could be a continuing increase in the amount of slack on all our tasks.
I'm sure that whatever finally arrives will be elegant and practical, so I'm not too concerned.
"Ok, so we sometimes have real emergencies which need an immediate response. You will recognise these when they happen - you don’t need to sit down and allocate them a priority. But let’s face it, all your other “urgent priorities” are only urgent because you have left them to the last minute. And why have you left them to the last minute? - because you are prioritizing by urgency, that’s why!"
I gather this blog post represents a change in opinion, and also a change in focus: "urgent to start" is better than leaving something until it's urgent to finish.
I find the older advice more helpful, and the newer advice hard to grasp. In my work, very little is truly urgent. I focus on bigger stuff and delegate urgent things. It's quite impossible to qualify how urgent the rest is most of the time. I will pick whatever stands out as important to do now, though there are no deadlines. There is only questions of present value, and present readiness.
<< In fact, one measure of control could be a continuing increase in the amount of slack on all our tasks. >>
The essential thing is that you should prioritize by urgency alone and no use any other criteria. If you mix it with something else, like importance, then it doesn't work. If you do prioritize by urgency alone then the slack in the system will increase a lot. You really need to try it to appreciate it.
It's not so much that this blog post represents a change in opinion as that I've come to a greater understanding of the nature of urgency. The passage you quote shows that I was thinking of urgency in terms of "deadline chasing". Now I realise that you can avoid deadline chasing altogether if you use urgency properly.
I think when you are talking about your own work, there's a danger of confusing different meanings of the word "urgency". "Urgent" is something that needs doing soon, before most other things. "Degree of urgency" on the other hand is a scale that ranges from "Must be done this second" to "No need to get round to this ever".
Obviously your work has some degree of urgency above 0 or you wouldn't need to do it at all. When you say "I will pick whatever stands out as important to do now" the words "important to do now" describe the degree of urgency it has for you.
I remember advising a small firm once about time management. The was one secretary who worked for all four of the working partners. She had a real problem knowing how to prioritize her work between the partners. They usually gave no indication of when they wanted a piece of work done. So she had to guess what priority things were. This didn't work very well, as you can imagine.
So I said to the partners "When you give a piece of work to Lisa, just indicate when you want it done by."
One of the partners replied: "I don't mind when it's done".
So I said "Is it ok if Lisa takes a year to do it?"
The partner replied, "No, of course not!"
"So you do mind when it's done then?"
He got the point.
If it is vitally important that you set your priorities by the degree of urgency and nothing else then the definition matters a lot. I haven't got it yet.
If, on the other hand, the Final Version uses a separate set of rules inspired by your latest idea of urgency, it really doesn't matter whether I understand the philosophical underpinnings or not. I just need to try it and watch in awe as everything swims into control.
In fact the entire decision process is just "Pick something that seems important now", and not prioritizing at all.
My kids' school doesn't teach this. 10 different teachers so far, and none of them gave milestones in advance! They look at the kids' progress, tell some they're behind, then adjust the deadline to suit the kids. Nor do they give word-count. Quality is more important -- until you hand in 100 quality words and learn they wanted 500 words and 5 pictures.
I made my son plan his daily milestones in advance this month, since he had two projects at the same time. He asked the teacher if it looked okay to her (especially his plan for 9 paragraphs and 5 pictures). She'd never seen anyone do that before (including, I suspect, herself.)
We alternate who chooses how to plan his projects. On his months, he's slowly shifting from "When I feel like it" to something a bit better, and the busier the month the more planning he does. He even left 4 days for printer breakdowns this month, and proudly showed me how he left weekends empty and ensured he didn't have heavy loads for both projects on the same day!
I have a category between Someday-Maybe and Now. They stay on the current list, since I want to keep moving on them, but are the first to drop when life gets busy. I average 5 sessions a month on them. Slower than I'd like, but enough to make progress.
If I know how long it takes and have a deadline, I can calculate when I have to start at the latest. But constantly estimating the duration of every task and every project is just exhausting. And often I have no way of making a good estimate.
So, how do you work out the urgency of the start?
Each is a closed list. If I finish (or, for some things, just start) everything on my Today list, I'm done. Or...I can look to the Week list to see if anything "stands out". For me, this gives better perspective than one long list. I know what I should be focusing on - and don't waste energy looking at the things I don't need to be worrying about (yet). It's simple/easy too...which I'm learning is more important for a system than I realized in the past.
<< In fact the entire decision process is just "Pick something that seems important now", and not prioritizing at all. >>
It's interesting the way you put that. "Something that seems important now" sounds as if it's prioritizing by importance. But importance isn't something that just appears one moment and goes away the next.
What you actually mean, I suspect, is "something that it seems important to do now". That is a prioritization by urgency.
<< Reframing what urgency means sounds intriguing. >>
I don't know why you think that I've reframed what urgency means. All I thought I was doing was _reminding_ people that urgency relates to the start not the finish. Even as a schoolboy I knew that if I wanted to get my homework in by the deadline of tomorrow morning, I would have to miss watching the tv programme I really wanted to see, deadline this evening. (No video recorders in those days!)
<< One practical question: How do I determine the urgency of the start? >>
How have you been doing it up to now? Unless your work life so far has consisted solely of missed deadlines, you must have some idea of when you have to start a project in order to finish it on time. You don't need a new special technique. Just use your existing knowledge.
<< Redefining a common term like 'urgency' to mean something that it doesn't mean to most people is not a likely path to a best-seller. >>
I'm afraid that I am completely unable to see how I have redefined "urgency". I have used it in its normal everyday sense, as understood by everyone.
<< As just one example, I have been adding a 1st-priority task to my list almost every day, which is to exercise. I normally try to do it early, before work. The reason I'm doing this is that I have had some health problems, and regular exercise is keeping me healthier, without having to take more medicines or be on a more restrictive diet. If I didn't do this program, I might end up in Urgent Care (or a hospital's Emergency Room), which would be a truly urgent situation, like a deadline that was about to hit. So Mark may say that it is urgent that I do this exercise program, but most people would say I'm doing it because my health is important to me. >>
No, you are really missing the point here. You have committed to doing the exercise programme because it is important. And the fact that you have committed to doing it is why you regard it as urgent to do the programme before work.
People make commitments because they are important to them, then they do the resulting work in order of urgency. I can't make it any clearer than that.
"And the fact that you have committed to doing it is why you regard it as urgent to do the programme before work."
I would never say it's urgent to do the program before work. I would say it's important. Urgency is about whether and when consequences will follow if something is not done. Skipping exercise today will not have consequences long-term nor imminently, so it isn't called urgent. Regularly skipping exercise will have consequences.
"What you [Alan] actually mean, I suspect, is 'something that it seems important to do now'. That is a prioritization by urgency not by importance."
I agree with the first sentence. I agree with what you mean by the second sentence, but I feel awkward about the word urgency.
Thanks for clarifying. You summarized: "People make commitments because they are important to them, then they do the resulting work in order of urgency." This makes sense. I think what might seem objectionable to some, myself included, is that the term 'urgent' has a lot of negative stress-inducing connotations. A thesaurus gives these synonyms: acute, pressing, dire, desperate, critical, serious, grave, intense, crying, burning, compelling, extreme, exigent, high-priority, top-priority; life-and-death. None of these seems much better. So while I see your point, and it makes sense to order one's work in time to meet all deadlines, I would like to think of my work and life as not being driven constantly by a sense of urgency.
I think there are two factors at play in decision making: the value of working on something, and the cost of not working on something now. For example, you need a sweater and will buy it, but it's a question of when. Buying a sweater now to keep warm, vs. buying a sweater later and being (slightly) cold for a while vs. buying when a sale comes on before the sale ends.
You may delay buying a sweater while other things are more important to work on. When that sale comes around, there still is no reason to rush and buy the sweater until you get more pressing things out of the way. But now the sale approaches an end, and we have a situation of urgency: Not buying the sweater now implies continued chilliness, AND loss of an opportunity to save money. It's that cut-off date which gives a sudden change in cost that provides urgency. Until then, everything has a constant cost or reward and you simply choose whatever has the greatest reward. It's those events that discontinuously change the value of work that override the normal importance equation.
<< I would like to think of my work and life as not being driven constantly by a sense of urgency. >>
Well so would I. The entire point of what I am saying is that if you pay attention to urgency you avoid urgency becoming critical - and therefore don't need to be driven by a sense of urgency. If you deal with things in order of urgency then you avoid deadline chasing.
<< I would never say it's urgent to do the program before work. I would say it's important. >>
Well, I think you'd be wrong. If you had some extremely important project like developing a new vaccine against malaria, then if your were using importance as your criteria you would do that before you did your exercise, which is a task of lesser importance.
But if you are using urgency rather than importance as your criteria, then you would do the exercise first because you have allocated it that degree of urgency in spite of the fact that the other project is more important.
<< Urgency is about whether and when consequences will follow if something is not done. >>
I can't agree with that either. Something completely trivial may be urgent, such as whether I catch a particular programme on the radio. There may be no consequences at all to missing it. Your definition actually fits importance more than urgency.
(1) This idea of sorting by urgency works ONLY if you are committed to doing everything on your list, and only if urgency is your ONLY sorting criterion.
(2) If you are using your list as a "catch-all", then you might have many "someday/maybe" items on your list. The implied action for all such items is "Evaluate this item and determine what it actually is, and whether you are committed to doing it." With this understanding, you can still sort by urgency, even with a list that contains the same kinds of random items that a typical AF1 list might contain.
(3) Prioritizing by urgency does NOT mean "take action only at the last minute when disaster is imminent". If you develop a good strong sense of how urgent things REALLY are, and prioritize that way, this will help you avoid crises.
OK so far?
Some other thoughts.
On exercise - the urgency is determined by your commitment. Let's say you have made yourself a commitment to exercise every day. If this is a REAL commitment, then every day you do have an urgent task that MUST be finished that day: do your exercise. Maybe the only way you can actually do it is to block out that time at the beginning of the day before work.
If you keep putting off the exercise, it's because you've mixed up the urgency of the consequences with the urgency of the required action. The consequences might be years away. But the required action is TODAY.
I like this way of thinking about it. It clarifies the real pressing need at the point of action.
<< This idea of sorting by urgency works ONLY if you are committed to doing everything on your list, and only if urgency is your ONLY sorting criterion. >>
No, I don't think that's right and it isn't what I wrote. What I wrote was that prioritizing by importance doesn't work because if every task on the list has to be done they are to all intents and purposes of equal importance. I might add that if there are tasks on the list which don't have to be done then they are in effect of zero importance and zero urgency and therefore they can be ignored until such time until a commitment is made to them.
<< If you are using your list as a "catch-all", then you might have many "someday/maybe" items on your list. The implied action for all such items is "Evaluate this item and determine what it actually is, and whether you are committed to doing it." With this understanding, you can still sort by urgency, even with a list that contains the same kinds of random items that a typical AF1 list might contain. >>
Yes, I usually put a question mark after that sort of item, e.g. "Sail round world?" to show that the task is actually to decide whether or not to do it. Once I've made the decision the task is deleted if the answer is "No" and is re-entered as something like "Sail round world - action needed now" if the answer is "Yes".
<< Prioritizing by urgency does NOT mean "take action only at the last minute when disaster is imminent". If you develop a good strong sense of how urgent things REALLY are, and prioritize that way, this will help you avoid crises. >>
Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it "prioritizing by degree of urgency".
<< On exercise - the urgency is determined by your commitment. Let's say you have made yourself a commitment to exercise every day. If this is a REAL commitment, then every day you do have an urgent task that MUST be finished that day: do your exercise. >>
Correct
<< If you keep putting off the exercise, it's because you've mixed up the urgency of the consequences with the urgency of the required action. The consequences might be years away. But the required action is TODAY. >>
Correct.
<< Anyone who freelances or runs an independent business, or just has the freedom and inclination to define their own goals in multiple areas, is going to have a lot of nice-to-do-but-not-top-priority tasks that they know they may or may not get around to during any given time period. >>
Yes, and I think this is one of the most common mistakes that these types of people make. A to-do list after all is a list of things to do, not a list of every idea that has entered someone's head. If you are working off a to-do list then it needs to be focused - just as your business needs to be focused. Lack of focus is a killer for independents.
<< You've even dealt with the issue yourself in DIT and the Focus systems through the dismissal process. >>
Indeed I have. But note that the audit in DIT is directed at reducing commitments. If you have taken on too many commitments you need to do something about it, since work you have committed to needs to be done. If you've put yourself in a position where it's impossible to do all the resulting work, then the only solution is to reduce your commitments to what you can handle.
In fact none of the systems you mention works like a conventional to-do list which is why I don't call them to-do lists. The DIT list is known as a "Will Do List" (note "will do", not "might do") and the AF/SF lists are known as AF or SF lists.
Note the difference in meaning between these examples:
"He has been called away by urgent business"
"Which is more urgent, the report on Project A or the report on Project B?" "Project A because the meeting is next week".
In the first example the business is pressing, so pressing that other stuff has had to be cancelled because of it.
In the second example, neither of the project reports is urgent in this sense. The questioner just wants to know which one to do first.
The second sense is the one I am using in the article.
It's amazing how easy it is to soothe a customer by agreeing they have a problem, asking them what they think the best way to handle it is, and, assuming it's a reasonable solution, telling them that's what you'll suggest to your boss. Of course, you then need to earn a reputation for getting the file through the system and approval back to the customer in a reasonable time.
That simply means that you want to do more things in life than you actually can. And there's nothing bad about it. On the contrary -- that's how it should be.
<< That simply means that you want to do more things in life than you actually can.>>
Wanting to do more things than you can do is fine, but you should only commit to doing what you are actually capable of doing. If you have more commitments than time available then some of the commitments are going to get done badly or not at all - in which case you are not really committed to them.
A to-list is, or should be, a list of the actions necessary to fulfill your commitments. If you don't do the actions then you haven't fulfilled your commitments.
For instance, I show dogs, and washing them needs to happen the night before the show since if they are washed earlier, they tend to get dirty again. But, even though this is an urgent task, I can make it easier by getting better equipment (sprayer, dog dryer), ordering the tasks in better order, and still washing dogs on non-show weekends (non-urgent) so that they will be relatively tangle-free the evening before the shows. Thus re-engineering is an important task, that makes the urgent task be less stressful and take less overall time.