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How to prioritize tasks?

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Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#11

Post by luckylion »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #3

I see these kinds of posts a lot on here. This one is just like all the others. Trying to reduce effort/reward down to some kind of scoring method.

It's probably correct, but now the problem just moved to accurately scoring each task on a variety of scales. What I find more and more is that it's very hard to see beyond the tasks and figure out side effects of finishing some task or feature because it quickly gets very complex and if you spend time on really thinking it all through to the point where you're certain about the right order, you probably could've knocked half of the tasks out already instead of studying their relationships and long-term effects.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#12

Post by hacker_junky »

seanw444 wrote: post #4

Do people really have this hard of a time deciding what task to do? If you have something that needs doing urgently , then do that. Otherwise... it just depends? There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

Good question! Do you have a personal strategy for deciding which task to prioritize, if any?

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#13

Post by tunesmith »

I've found it more useful to focus on "How to deprioritize tasks?" There, it's helpful to have a good understanding of the operative principles and values. All sorts of possible to-do items come up that only kinda sorta express those values. Those are the enemy. You have to get good at the logic of necessity and sufficiency to recognize which ones you can ignore entirely.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#14

Post by doitLP »

Swizec wrote: post #7
PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

Eisenhower method is all you need. Decide if something is urgent, and if it is important. Urgent and important? Do it. Urgent and not important? Delegate it. Not urgent and important? Schedule it. Not urgent and not important? Bin. Lots of things that are urgent and important? Choose 1 thing. Do it. Then do the next one. I read 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman recently. TLDR: embrace you don't have time for it all, and…

Do less. Focus on the things you care about.

If you don’t know what you care about, spend time figuring that out first, even if it takes longer than you feel like it should.

A good place to start is Cal Newport’s podcast Deep Questions

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#15

Post by ergonaught »

How to Prioritize Anything:

1) Make two lists. Write everything down in the first list. The second list is empty.

2) Something came up! One item on this list cannot be done. It doesn't matter why: you know which one that is. Which one is it? Write that down in the second list and mark it off the first list.

3) Repeat until the first list is done.

Congratulations, your second list is prioritized (albeit likely in reverse order), without extraneous algebraic diversions.

Bonus points for going Warren Buffett on it: only the top 3 priorities matter, sideline everything else; consider repeating the exercise after those three are complete.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#16

Post by lifeisstillgood »

The right people in the right room

Most tasks on most task lists are not tasks - they are wishes or outcomes

Prioritising outcomes is easy. Do we get five new corporate customers this month or do we build a web scaling system on AWS.

One is a task, one is an unknown project with no clear definitions or starting process. Which is why many startups have great infrastructure and not enough customers.

So, unless you know which right people to put in a room, the thing in front of you is not a task it's an investigation.

And to me this answers the question a few days back about sam altmann - determination is what gets you from "get five customers" to "call bob smith of company X after Joe Schmoe introduces us and offer him a 12 month for price of 6 deal if they sign this week"

Determination is of course made easier with contacts but politicians will politician

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#17

Post by TeMPOraL »

d_sem wrote: post #10
PaulRobinson wrote: post #6

Eisenhower method is all you need. Decide if something is urgent, and if it is important. Urgent and important? Do it. Urgent and not important? Delegate it. Not urgent and important? Schedule it. Not urgent and not important? Bin. Lots of things that are urgent and important? Choose 1 thing. Do it. Then do the next one. I read 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman recently. TLDR: embrace you don't have time for it all, and…

I've seen this four quadrant method frequently referenced, most recently I came across it in David Allen's book "Getting Things Done". I don't quite understand the logic behind delegating non-urgent and important work. Two points of confusion: 1) In business, how do I have the authority to delegate when responsibility is frequently defined by the role/organization or I'm at the bottom of the organization? 2) Delegati…

For 1), I suspect once you figure out you can just start asking your co-workers to do your stuff, you reach first level of enlightenment and transition from $jobtitle into senior $jobtitle.

For 2), the point is to throw the task - and responsibility for completing it - over the wall. That's why it's prescribed for Urgent and Not Important work: urgency is satisfied by you delegating quickly, and if your victim screws up and fails the task, well, no big deal - the task wasn't important anyway.

All that to say: yeah, I can't see a way this isn't abusive and antisocial, unless done in business context with clear rules, such as hiring people specifically for you to delegate work to them.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#18

Post by comboy »

hacker_junky wrote: post #12
seanw444 wrote: post #4

Do people really have this hard of a time deciding what task to do? If you have something that needs doing urgently , then do that. Otherwise... it just depends? There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

Good question! Do you have a personal strategy for deciding which task to prioritize, if any?

It is a very complex function which takes into account all your previous experiences, your value system and your estimations regarding the future.

Good news though! Your brain already computed it, and presents you the answer in the form of "I want to do that thing right now".

Quick debug sheet:

- my brain in wrong, what I want is not what I should - are you sure? Figure out your narration. If you ever have been excited about some project you know how well your "want" will align with your "should". You may be stuck in some story about yourself which you haven't updated.

- I want it all! Yeah you are really still just looking, if you are not sure what you want, that's not really a problem. It's fine to not want anything in particular. If you keep telling yourself you really want it all just choose at random, and then when you "have time" slowly and patiently explain yourself that your time is finite, and amount of ideas you can come up with, not necessarily.

I suggest also trusting yourself with this. Worst case scenario you spend some time doing the thing you wanted to do and observing that will be a valuable data point (automatically integrated) into your future "I want to".

edit: I answered it in the context of personal lists, startups have much simpler optimization function

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#19

Post by theptip »

Instead of maximizing “benefit - cost” I would recommend maximizing “cost/benefit”.

The former will bias towards big tasks with big payoffs, but often there are small tasks with extremely good ROI, which will get lost if you just look at the magnitude of the net benefit.

But, +1 to the general approach of trying to put a number on it. Remember though, your numbers are uncertain, beware the McNamara fallacy.

Re: How to prioritize tasks?

#20

Post by ozim »

simonw wrote: post #8
seanw444 wrote: post #4

Do people really have this hard of a time deciding what task to do? If you have something that needs doing urgently , then do that. Otherwise... it just depends? There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

I've long thought that the single hardest problem in startups is prioritization: figuring out the most important thing to build (or do) next.

It also is that while building new product often there is no single thing that is urgent but everything needs to be done.
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