Category: Productivity

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Productivity

Priorities are Misleading

One of the traditional ways of managing workload is to organize tasks based on their priority. Tasks of high priority make their way up the work pile, and tasks of low priority sink down to the bottom of the pile.

The rationale behind this is that if you spend your time attending to the tasks with high priority, you will be able to make better use of your time and get better results than spending time on tasks with little return.

While there is a lot of truth to this, it’s not the whole truth.

Priority is Relative

The first fact we have to acknowledge about priorities is that they are relative. A high priority task must be done prior to (i.e. before) low priority tasks. You judge the priority level of each task compared to all other tasks.

Although this seems sensible at first, but consider what will happen when you always have high priority tasks taking up all your attention, while low priority tasks go unnoticed at the bottom of the pile.

You might think: “Who cares! They’re low priority tasks, anyway!”

Which brings us to our second point…

Priority and Importance

Priorities make you assume that low priority tasks are of little importance, and can be ignored as long as you are getting high priority tasks done. But as we’ve already pointed out, relative to high priority tasks, low priority tasks are of lesser importance.

This does not mean that they are not important. They may not be important, but since they made their way to your work load, there is a likelihood that you need to get them done.

By continuously working on high priority tasks, you may be completely ignoring low priority tasks, and the consequences aren’t always pretty.

Priorities and Catastrophes

Given the fact that organizing tasks based on priority is relative, and that all tasks you have consciously taken on are important, neglecting low priority tasks may evolve into catastrophes.

One way this can happen is when the deadline for a low priority task may have been encroaching on you without you being aware of it, since you were too busy working on high priority tasks.

This isn’t to say that you should ignore task priority, but that priority should not be your only consideration.

Your entire workload should be put into a system that aims to get all work done, rather than risk ignoring tasks that are important, but may be filtered out from the perspective of priority.

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Productivity

To-Do List and To-Keep-Doing List

There’s a difference between tasks you need to get done, and tasks you need to keep doing. Mixing them up on a single list is detrimental to both types of task and, therefore, to your own progress.

What’s the difference between the two? And why should they be kept apart?

To-Do List

The tasks that have a place on your to-do list are those that are done to achieve a particular goal. They may be part of a larger project, but once a task is done, it doesn’t need to be re-visited. You simply cross it off your list and enjoy the feeling of getting things done and being in control of your workload.

An example of a to-do list item is calling a plumber to fix a burst pipe. Once you make the phone call, you don’t need to keep calling the plumber on a daily basis (provided he comes by to fix your pipe!).

To-Keep-Doing List

But there are tasks that need to be done on a regular basis. You can’t simply get them done once, then check them off your list, because they will pop up again, and again, and again.

Even if THEY don’t make an appearance by themselves, YOU need to keep doing them on a regular basis. You need to keep a constant reminder, especially if it’s an action that’s associated with developing a habit.

Take exercising, for example. You can’t exercise once in your life, then forget about it. You need to have a routine of how often you exercise. This means that this task can’t be crossed off your list. It needs to remain on your list as a reminder of something you need to keep on doing (which you would otherwise forget).

Why Separate the Two

Lists are generally used as reminders. A to-do list is used to remind you of the tasks you want to get done. But you don’t read everything that’s on your to-do list. You scan through the list for what’s left to be done, and you can forget about the tasks that have been successfully completed.

This means that if a task is to be done on a regular basis (e.g. exercising, writing blog posts, etc), you cannot cross them off and forget about them.

Besides, if you know that a task will be repeated, you can’t cross it off your to-do list! Imagine how frustrating that can be! You go through your to-do list, only to mentally filter through the tasks you can do and cross off, and the tasks you must keep and never cross off. This defeats the purpose of having a to-do list!

A to-do list can, therefore, be used for the tasks you can forget about once done, and the to-keep-doing list acts as a constant reminder of the things you want to do on a regular basis.

You can even have several to-keep-doing lists based on how frequently you repeat the task (on a daily, weekly, monthly, whateverly basis).

This way you acknowledge the difference in the type of tasks you are dealing with, and to handle them accordingly. You’ll be surprised by the effect this will have on your productivity and clarity!

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Productivity

Action Orientation

We’ve reached a point in human history where the information available to us has reached the highest it has ever been, and it continues to grow exponentially. This has made life extremely complicated. There is a lot of information to absorb and that requires a great deal of mental digestion before we can make sense of it.

One of the main obstacles to productivity is shifting our focus from using the information we have available to us to processing that information.

We get caught up trying to gain more knowledge, analyze what we’ve gained, processing what we know, planning what to do, re-defining how to present the information, etc, etc, etc. We continuously process and re-process information, without deciding how we’ll use this information.

This is especially damaging when the thinking is done in preparation for a task, or as part of a project. It makes an obvious appearance as Chronic To-Do Listing (I haven’t thought of a funkier name for it). This is when you get caught up writing to-do lists, but never doing any of the tasks on the list (I fall into this trap quite often that I’m thinking of naming this disease after me 😛 I’ll put that on my to-do list!).

You write the to-do list to clarify your thoughts on what you need to get done. But once these thoughts are clarified, you haven’t directed your focus towards doing the work. As though clarifying your thinking is an end unto itself.

“If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim”
From “If” by Rudyard Kipling

The reason why we, as humans, have the ability to sense the environment around us, and to develop an understanding of it, is not to simply make observations, but to know how to behave, based on what we know.

To become more productive, we need to shift our focus from thinking to doing. In other words, we need an Action Orientation. This doesn’t mean that we don’t do any thinking. In fact, we can do a great deal of thinking. But we should always attach to our thinking the question: “How will I use this information?”

And then acting on the answer.