Get Everything Done

Further to Nico’s system of urgency, on the face of it that looks like a very good system indeed.

Priority systems always seem to be a recognised and logical way of dealing with things and they have been around a long time – A,B C method etc. But are they really a good idea? Does urgency just create more urgency in one’s life and other people who you engage with (I think so).

My thoughts are that if we generally work on items that seem urgent and prioritise things, then naturally certain tasks get pushed back and a backlog arises (which can be dealt with by CI or MIT of course). They are usually tasks you don’t really want to do or lower priority things that can wait. At some point those pushed back tasks inevitably become urgent and if someone else is involved then you are passing on your urgency to them (urgency seems to spread!). Before we know it, more or less everything is urgent and that has happened to me a lot in the past when I just get swamped.

Working on things in urgency order can be very useful as it creates a capacity to take on a large amount of work. But I think that is problematic as we often don’t know our limits and when to say no. It is too easy to take on too much and prioritising enables that.

Should we say no to urgency and just deal with things in our own time? Or resist requests to do things and say it can only be done in x weeks/months? Systems like Mark’s Do It Tomorrow are of course perfect as they don’t spread urgency.

Luckily I have more time available than my tasks take to complete, so I don’t have the problem and I’m more or less doing Mark’s DIT system (or more like do it in a few days). My oldest task is Wednesday this week, but of course we all have times when too much work comes in outside of our control (I was formally Mr Backlog and a very stressful time overall – much happier now).

Hi Mr.Done

The central theme of my system is do work on your current initiative first. The urgent stuff is secondary.

Nico

Nico: I don’t know why, but whenever I do tasks into some sort or urgency/CI order, then stress and procrastination sets in. It seems like my brain also resists those tasks. It is like those tasks have a red flag signalling “difficult” etc, even though they may not be. Very odd. Also, I’m very aware of all the tasks and I can’t seem to switch off. For some strange reason I wake up a 4am thinking about them!
I need a blinkered approach – the less I know the better. Ideally the only thing on my mind is the last one I completed. Anyway, I guess we are all different and what works for some won’t for others. But for me, just doing the oldest tasks works and ignoring urgency and everything else. But of course, that only works if I can keep up to date. My stress levels are linked entirely to how old my tasks are.
Also, I have got a lot of deadlines and a lot of tasks coming in, so it is actually quite difficult to sort things into urgency/CI order. It can be done but takes time which I guess is better spent just doing the tasks.