Lifehacker: You know it's important to prioritize your to-do list, and may have tried various methods to do so, from the Eisenhower Matrix (to determine how timely and urgent each task is), to the Pareto principle (to decide how to allocate your time to maximize your results). The problem is that determining what's actually a priority can be an abstract problem.
11 comments:
Okay. This article was very proud of itself, considering how straightfoward the advice actually ended up being. Personally, I feel like taking the extra time to assign and divide these numbers is a waste of time that could be used to just do the tasks. Although I respect that taking the time to organize/ prioritize a to-do list can be very useful to increase productivity in the long run, I feel like the same advice of “just think about both the impact and effort of these tasks” can be used in a qualitative way to divide things up rather than having to do this extra calculation. Still, maybe worth a try for someone who really is that data driven if you feel the extra time is worth it. That quote about 80% of results coming from 20% of work is interesting, and it is fair to keep in mind that sometimes you really do just need to buckle down on the easy, low-effort tasks to get them over with.
To be honest, I’m not particularly sold by this productivity ‘hack’. I really think it’s just making an extra task that really just serves the purpose of over-complicating your initial list. Adding a number of identifiers in theory is not a bad idea, but I think it really just serves the purpose of adding extra data you don’t really need to a list that’s supposed to make the rest of your day more streamlined. It just feels superfluous. Why add more steps to a daily routine that’s presumably already cluttered by tasks that take time. All of that being said, I’m sure there’s some kind of optimizer person that this would serve well in some shape or form - sometimes things like this are perfect for incredibly specific types of organizational people and I could see someone who likes getting data on everything using this to optimize their workflow. Just not personally my cup of tea.
With it being the week returning from break, I have found it difficult to be productive. I really need to get back into the swing of being able to sit down and do my assignments without getting sidetracked. Sometimes it is the motivation to do my work that is difficult to find, but a lot of times it is because it is hard for me to focus and assignments talke me a lot longer than they realistically should. I think that this was a well timed article for me. This is a period when I need assistance making the most of my time to say on top of my work. I think this method has the capability of being helpful for someone when making their to-do list, but it also seems a little over complicated. I am not sure it would be as helpful for someone less number oriented and seems like a bit of a hassle to set up.
This article made me want to take a nap. I get what the method is attempting to accomplish by finding the absolute best order of operations for your to-do list but it doesn’t even have multiple good examples of how this plan works out in real life to a real to-do list. I think by doing this task you just add another task to list of things to do. If a class made me create one of these plans to organize my school work I think it would make me procrastinate on my assignments because I would want to procrastinate turning my to do list into a math problem. Personally I also think this method of planning out my schedule would make me more anxious about the things I have to do because I wouldn’t be able to be in denial of how long a big assignment would actually take whereas I just start early on every assignment and attack them little by little. But I guess I could see how this would be helpful to some people’s minds.
While I think that this article’s ideas are interesting in concept it seems a bit without substance, or at least it feels like an article that lacks a lot of substance for being turned into a full written piece. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to best organize my life and my time and this method just seems kinda arbitrary. I find that usually in order to make a successful plan you should know how to rank an order to actualize your plans and tasks based on how quickly they are needed and how much time it takes to do them. It feels like a lot of extra work to put specific number rankings onto how much effort you put into it and how much reward it will give you when you’ve already, as suggested, ranked them based on large, medium, and small tasks (i.e. in order to decide what is large, medium, or small you’ve probably already in your head ranked how important it is and how much time it will take).
I don’t even know why I’m reading this article as I’m someone who doesn’t use a to do list, and maybe I should, but I still haven’t found a good way to start incorporating it into my daily life. But reading the article, there’s a lot of tips that I can start incorporating into doing projects and other tasks so I have some more motivation. Assigning numbers for effort and the project’s impact seems so useful, as it gives me a more visual way to see which tasks I will need to spend more time on. I’ll probably incorporate a color coding mechanism as well as the numbering to help me more (and it will be prettyyyyy). This is such an easy way to prioritize my tasks rather than traditional ways, and its an easy way to do so as well! Looking forward to using this hack for my to do lists(when I start having them)!
I opened this article thinking I might actually learn something new only to be disappointed by an incredibly common and self-explanatory principle that most people develop on their own. Although most people don't have a formula or a calculation, almost everyone weighs the priority of an item versus how much effort it takes to be completed. I do this on a daily basis with both my homework and my personal tasks and although having precise numbers might be helpful if you're just starting to use this method I feel like it's not very necessary.I personally feel like creating this Matrix is just a waste of time because we do it intuitively and setting up a spreadsheet or formula to track this is time and energy that could be spent doing the tasks themselves. I feel like this is especially important with how fluid priorities and effort ratings can be I know for me personally something can be a seven on an effort scale one hour and afford the next just depending on certain variables and tracking that would take up so much of my time. I think this principle is important to keep in mind but actually tracking the data is a waste of time.
As someone who always has multiple to-do lists going at all times I thought this was really interesting. I cannot decide if I am a fan of this idea or not. I like the idea of assigning each task number based on effort and result because I could see it being helpful with deciding what carries more weight. I just don’t know if I would use this. I list my to-list based on when it needs to be done and unfortunately for me everything on my list has to get done so I usually try my best to just start at the top and work my way down. However, sometimes I am really struggling to focus on a certain task and I will jump around to another task. I think sometimes people get stuck with to-do lists because they feel like they have to get the most important thing done and they cannot do anything else until that is done and I just do not think that is true. My mood, energy, ability to focus and so much more dictate which task I work on. So maybe I could implement this strategy to give me more information on a task but I do not think I would use it to decide what I do first as that is always changing.
I LOVE diving deep into the semantics of task management. I feel like I have tried so many options to optimize my workflow. Over the last almost two years here at Carnegie Mellon, my workload has only gotten more overwhelming, the need for an effective method of task management has only gotten more necessary. I have landed (for now) on using only Google Suite for managing my entire life (which is probably a bad idea considering they have like all of my data.) The idea that tasks hold different values and, separate from that, are ranked on a scale in terms of time investment/ difficulty, is interesting to me. I think I have subconsciously been doing this for my whole life, and I have a feeling this article will relate to a future class we have in PRM with Shay for “Getting Things Done.”
Ugh, I found this article quite frustrating to read. While I too love a new productivity system, the tone felt weirdly accusatory. It indirectly stated - if one is not using one of these fancy data-driven systems, they are not achieving maximal productivity. While numbers are great, this article is missing a key factor in why we do what we do - joy! We cannot exist as robots, simply following a list of preplanned tasks for maximal efficiency. I do see the tools they explain as being useful for projects (think critical path or prepping a show), however, as a system of life it feels a bit disappointing. My current productivity set-up is a Google spreadsheet, “max seven” mindset, and a Pomodoro timer. Max seven is the idea that you can only get seven things done in one to-do list without needing a break and although “lenient” for lack of a better word, it’s been the most helpful thing in my routine.
I like the idea of the Pareto principle, but I don't think that it is very useful for me right now, unfortunately. The thought alone of putting down every single thing I have to do on paper stresses me out a lot, and that itself would make the whole process more trouble than it’s worth. I think the dopamine rush would be helpful when it comes to assignment completion, but I think the sheer amount of things on the list would make it equally hard to qualify data, especially once you add in things such as large long-term school assignments, which may all be a 10 and a 10 in certain lights. Splitting the task down would be possible, but would just clutter the list even further. We’ve discussed a lot in Production Planning about not doing tasks that take more effort than they help, and I think that with the additional calculation and sorting needed to work this system, it simply isn’t worth it to break it down numerically. I may, however, adapt some of the idea of breaking prioritization and effort into two in some of my planning.
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