ForumsQuestionssemi automatic change of priorities


semi automatic change of priorities
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peter_1348088910

Posted: Jan 20, 2013
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i have a suggestion about 'priorities'.
i've learned that a priority depends on how IMPORTANT and how URGENT a task is. this implicates that while time flies, something can grow from a low priority to a higher priority.
problem: when you put a task in a low priority because the due-date is far away, it might happen that it gets out of sight and you forget about it because you are only dealing with high priorities.
it would be nice if one could enter dates on wich a priority changes. for example january 15 you enter a task that is MEDIUM, but feb 01 it gets HIGH and feb 20 it gets TOP (because due date is mar 01)
i hope this is interesting for other peolple too.
JPR

Posted: Jan 20, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Have you looked at TD's "Importance" sort criteria?

http://www.toodledo.com/info/help.php?sel=53
Salgud

Posted: Jan 22, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by peter_1348088910:
i have a suggestion about 'priorities'.
i've learned that a priority depends on how IMPORTANT and how URGENT a task is. this implicates that while time flies, something can grow from a low priority to a higher priority.
problem: when you put a task in a low priority because the due-date is far away, it might happen that it gets out of sight and you forget about it because you are only dealing with high priorities.
it would be nice if one could enter dates on wich a priority changes. for example january 15 you enter a task that is MEDIUM, but feb 01 it gets HIGH and feb 20 it gets TOP (because due date is mar 01)
i hope this is interesting for other peolple too.


This is not exactly new. If you want to know more about it, look at Covey's Urgent/Important grid, in the Seven Habits of Effective People and some of his other books.

As far as automating this process, that's rather difficult to do. No matter how you designed the software, more people would be unhappy with your solution that those that would be satisfied, since no 2 of us would want the same impact of urgency on a task's priority. Even for an individual, the relative urgency of a task does not, by itself, determine it's importance. I'm sure all of us here have put a less important task off, even past it's due date, to get a more important task done. That report I promised my boss today, but didn't get done because he asked me to do a big presentation tomorrow, and I simply don't have time to do both today. The report will wait until the day after tomorrow. But the auto-escalating feature will probably tell me to get the report done first.

As JPR pointed out, they have already tried to implement this idea with Importance. It works as well as any I've seen, but I still find it doesn't rank my tasks as well as I do. There are just too many factors to consider. Still, I recommend you try it out, maybe it will work better for you than it does for me.
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