What prioritising techniques do you have?

[S.G.Botsford]

I’m discovering there are only so many beans in the jar. Only so many minutes in the day. At the end of the day, I ask myself, “What did you get done today, Self?”

My project list is cyclic, extending over the span of the crop year. At the top level it’s divided in seasons – not strictly in the calendar sense. “Winter” is the time from enough snow that outside work is impractical other than firewood, to “Early Spring” when the snow is going, followed by the short season called “Mud” then “Late Spring” when the grass starts to green up to the of June, when the sales season (tree farm) starts to slow. “Fall” is from late august until we have hard frosts. “Late Fall” spans to winter.

Each season is a folder. Each project in a season has a defer date that corresponds to a bit before the expected beginning of the season.

Within a day, I have conflicting demands. Right now it’s 7 in the morning. Dark outside. But it’s also cold. So until 9 or 10 this is office time. Get my orders ready for spring. I’m a month overdue on that.

Once there’s decent light, and the temps are warm enough to work mostly bare handed, I’ll do more work on adding insulation to the cold room. This is about a 6 day project – I hope. But if I can get 4 hours a day on it, I will be pleased. So 2 weeks.

In the evening, watching TV, I can play with my schedule. I’m going to try some of these ideas, but at the bottom the key is to keep the urgent and important jobs from falling off the radar.

[OogieM]

My list is also seasonal but I can usually go more by the calendar because we raise livestock not crops and I define the mating, lambing, weaning etc times. I also have a folder for seasonal recurring projects. For me the recurring project that repeats yearly of plan sheep breeding starts in October when I decide on breeding ewes and rams and plan the matings. Shearing is always before lambing, Lambing starts the last week of April as any earlier and we will have more than 1 snowstorm during lambing.

One reason I cehck weather early, as in first thing right after my calendar is that so much is weather dependent.

[jonolo6]

I find it very interesting to hear about everyones different use cases and I’m facinated by how diverse our day to day world changes how we need to change our productivity routines. The farming/seasonal aspect above I find very interesting. My personal background is IT and I’m managing a number of teams across North America and Europe. I am responsible for services and features in production as well as software development, people management, processes for development (Agile for instance) etc. My basic folder structure right now is something like:

• Work
• Livesite
• Team Projects
• Team Improvements
• Stakeholder Management
• Personal Projects
• PR and Media
• Location leadership
• Home
• Properties
• Finance
• Health.

I have a lot of different projects and a large number of people to manage (over 100) and to add we’re a large company. This brings complexity to amount of contexts, etc.

Here is some of the things I need a system to be able to handle:

• A lot of meetings. Need information in meetings and capture actions. Need to know in-between meetings what to follow up on and where to minimise context switching.
• Track different workstreams reasonably parallel like the processes we use, people management, livesite, software projects, communications and leadership, improvements, ad hoc reorgs, etc…
• A lot of people and teams I’m responsible. I need to track to a basic level what people are working on so I can query them when we do our 1:1s and also to be able to identify when deliveries and promises are in jeopardy.
• I may need to ‘drop everything’ to deal with an outage on our livesite etc. so I need to restructure/reorder/defer work but easily swap back to those tasks once things calm down.
• I need to report on all livesite issues that’s in progress or happened during a week at any given time to my stakeholders and senior executives.
• Working across timezones with teams in Seattle to Brisbane -> both partnering engineering teams, leaders and stakeholders (internal customers) and tracking conversations, tasks, etc.

OF really helps me bring clarity out of my work, but I I find prioritisation (ordering) and changing things around based on changes in what work I need to focus on could really do with a lot of improvements in OF. Also the phone app is quite useless to work from directly. I feel that most actions should be 2-3 clicks away. I’d love if indentation and collapsing/expanding tree views was working in the ios app similarly to how Todoist does it.

[toddh]

Lots of great thought here. Here is a small item that I think about:

At its core, OF has the concept of an ordered list and is built around doing the top of the list first. A project could be sequential, and then only the first item is available. And then there is technically the “first” available. But when you are planning your day, you need to perform this prioritization we’re talking about.

The problem for me is that I can’t entirely complete one project before moving onto the next. Hence, I’m stuck working on a couple of items from project A, say alpha and beta, and a couple of items from project B, say one and two, in a single day. But how can I see the order I have planned to accomplish those items in? (I’m trying to work more on planning.)

I might want to do this: alpha -> one -> beta -> two.

Dragging and dropping would allow me to do that. But without that or some prioritizing technique, I can’t do this planning in OF. Contexts sort of work, but it becomes hacky as I have to do lots of moving around items between the contexts. For me, almost the best solution is just to rename the tasks with a number at the beginning and then sort alphabetically.

But that’s too much work, so I use a different tool and keep hoping.

[DrJJWMac]

But how can I see the order I have planned to accomplish those items in? (I’m trying to work more on planning.)

At this level, what you propose seems like over-planning to me. Suppose that I have two tasks before me, all of them of equal priority or energy level or focus-demand or … whatever else defines them other than being in two different projects (which by the way is the case when the two projects are sequential - four tasks become only two to choose between right now … not four to arrange in some “priority scheme”). I’d do whatever task strikes my fancy first, then do the other one next.

Alternatively, I’d flip a coin.

Why spend the time at this level coordinating the next step in life’s events instead of just jumping in and doing stuff?

But that’s too much work, so I use a different tool and keep hoping

What you are doing at this level sounds too much like unproductive busy work. The entire idea is at some point to trust that planning is complete, let go, and just do.

–
JJW

[jonolo6]

Agree with Tod here. I think there often is a need to order things in a different way than by project, dates and flagged.

I don’t have projects for cooking dinners, but if I did I might have several projects: ‘cook fish fingers tuesday’, ‘make a bbq on wednesday’, ‘host dinner for friends on Thursday’ and in those projects I might list the ingredients I need to buy when I go shopping. At the shop I would want to order the ingredients by the sections I’d pick them up in: vegetables, proteins, desserts, etc. And on the way to the shop I want to pick something else up and on the way back I want to pay the parking ticket, etc. So I want to order these things by whatever makes sense to optimise execution time and not have to run back and forth. I could create multiple levels of contexts, etc but there’s definitely a way of ensuring this as well through ordering on a different level.

-Jonas

[DrJJWMac]

So I want to order these things by whatever makes sense to optimise execution time and not have to run back and forth

The tasks you propose are not equal according to external conditions on them. In your shopping list example, the tasks are different in location based or defer-date based conditions.

My response was based on reading the post as a request to be able to organize tasks manually based solely on subjective desire, all else being equal.

In the former case (unequal external conditions on tasks), proper sorting is essential to plan effectively. In the latter case (all else being equal except a subjective “desire”), addition sorting is just busy work.

–
JJW

[bing098911]

Here are my 2 cents:
I have increasinlgy grown frustrated with the inability to manualy sort so I went on yet another hunt. No other GTD/Project manager app could fill the void of the features that OF has to offer. I did however stumble upon an app called Sorted.
It was a huge boost to my productivity because it allows you to sort your tasks based on a “timeline” thru out each day. The gestures to move tasks around is extremely fast and easy. Seeing all my tasks laid out on a timeline was HUGE!
But, I couldn’t rely on this as my sole GTD app as it lacks many features of a full featured app. I could no longer manage two apps as it took up more time than doing some of the work!
With all that said, here is my new work around:
I made a context for every 15 minutes of the day between 5 am and 10 pm.
I now look at my “today” view which filters on due and flagged items on my computer.
I then drag and drop each task to an approprate time context, effecitvely scheduling it!
The only downside to this, is the sheer volume of contexts I now have, but not a huge problem as the auto fill feature when selecting a context is quite nice!
One other downside is this negates my morning workflow on my phone as it would take quite awhile to put every task into a timeslot. I am willing to give up that morning routine and do it on my computer to gain this clarity of my day.
Let me know your thoughts!
I will trial this for about 2 weeks and report back if I find it to be a success!

[bing098911]

If there are any typo’s in the previous post, it’s because I sent this at 2 in the morning :)

[Vlad]

A bit OT, but still: It’s really amazing how many innovative solutions you can find in this forum that solve this two main problems in OmniFocus

• the current lack of custom fields (= tags / more contexts than one / etc.) and
• the impossibility to move tasks in a perspective

?!

[wilsonng]

It was a huge boost to my productivity because it allows you to sort your tasks based on a “timeline” thru out each day. The gestures to move tasks around is extremely fast and easy. Seeing all my tasks laid out on a timeline was HUGE!

I usually open my calendar app (either the native Apple Calendar or Fantastical) and switch to day view. I drag and drop an OmniFocus into a time slot if I want to declare that this time slot will be focused on a certain task or project. In Calendar, the note section will have a URL link that you can click on that will return you back to OmniFocus and select the task.

I can also switch to Calendar’s month view. Then I drag and drop an OmniFocus into a day block to say I will work on a task on this date but I don’t necessarily declare a time. I’ll do this because some days will be busy with walk-in clients and I can’t really declare an actual time slot to work on it. So I’ll put it into the day block to make it an all-day event. Then I know I can work on this task in the holes of my schedule.

[mdntz]

I’ve enjoyed reading your methods here @wilsonng, I’m going to try and implement them, I’ve struggled to stay on track with OmniFocus and have been using it very messily lately. I don’t suppose you have a broader overview of the way projects, contexts and the inbox are used in your workflow?

I really like the index card idea, it will disconnect me from the other tasks that interfere with my thought process, even if they’re not visible within OmniFocus, sometimes even having it open makes me feel overwhelmed.

[wilsonng]

I use the inbox to capture random thoughts throughout the day. When I get time to process them, I’ll assign a project and context. Then I add some notes to it. It either becomes a new project (automatically set to on hold) or placed in one of my single actions lists (office single actions, house single actions, personal single actions, etc.).

All new projects get placed on hold because I already have existing projects that I am working on. I don’t want to add new active projects unless I need to get it done within the next couple of weeks.

Here is a partial sneak peek at my current projects list:

In each folder, I have anywhere from one to three projects active. All the other projects are placed on hold. I recognize the fact that I have the capacity to handle a small group of projects at any one time. I will focus on three projects in each folder (area of responsibility such as Home, Office, Family, Community, etc.).

When I’m at home, I have one to three active projects for the house (mostly renovations). Then I’ll have one to three active projects at the office. Sometimes I won’t have anything active for a folder (area of responsibility) because I might have too many on my plate.

My current Big Rocks perspective is a project perspective that will show only active projects within a folder or group of folders.

I can have a Work Big Rock so that I focus on the currently active projects in my work folder. It is grouped by Projects and shows remaining items.

If I set a project back to “On Hold” status, it disappears from my Big Rocks perspective. I am not going to be working on a project anymore because I might have to replace it with something else more urgent.

In the Focus section of the perspective, i can choose a small sub-section of folders to look at. This allows me to create a “House Big Rocks” perspective or an “Office Big Rocks” perspective. This will allow me to focus on one folder (area of responsibility) and I don’t mix the two areas together.

If you go to projects and set different projects to active, you’ll see the project appear in the Big Rocks perspective. If you set the project to inactive, it will hide it from the Big Rocks. I figured that if it is a project I am currently working on, I’ll set it to active. Otherwise it goes back to on hold.

The Big Rocks perspective lets me work on the currently active projects without worrying about seeing the on hold projects. I try to finish the current active projects before I decide to make another active project.

I have a someday/maybe task to explore Kanban and see if I can work it into OmniFocus. But I’m busy with my active projects so that’ll have to wait ;-)

I do have a mind map that depicts my dreams and big goals. In my 6 month review, I’ll look at the mind map to see if I’m neglecting something or I’ve been focusing too much on one area of responsibility. This helps with my longer term goals.

I also have Single Action Lists that will always remain active. These are named after a folder (area of responsibility). They’ll have the one-off tasks (get milk and eggs, buy a new alarm clock) or repeated tasks (pay the cellphone bill every month, pay for gym membership monthly). These one-off or repeated tasks tend to be maintenance in nature. I must complete these tasks in order to maintain my quality of life at home and office.

I differentiate these maintenance tasks from Big Rocks. The Big Rock perspectives will focus on currently active projects that are not maintenance in nature.

HTH. Ask away if you need anything. I’m sure the forum members would chime in with their own methods of how to handle the sense of overwhelm.