GTD: priorities and fake due dates

Michael Gorsline at GTD Times has an excellent post that addresses a sticky issue for many who use GTD – either religiously or agnostically: priority.

Many GTD-type software programs allow users to assign a priority to a to-do item. Gorsline argues (persuasively, in my opinion) that hard-assigning a priority to individual tasks doesn’t take into account the reality of how we engage with the things we do – or at least how GTD assumes we do.

Now, of course, we prioritize how we’re going to complete our tasks. But Gorsline writes that, at any given moment, our priorities will be determined by the context in which we find ourselves (am I at my computer? am I on the phone? am I at work?) – something that GTD asks you to determine as you create each task; the time available to you at any given moment; and your level of energy at the moment. Are you too tired to make the phone calls now? Better that they wait until you can give them the attention that they require.

Our priorities are constantly changing based on how this matrix interacts with our current situation. Assigning priorities to tasks means you’re likely to spend a lot of time shuffling the deck, changing your priority codes, when you could be getting real work done.

This article won’t end the debate over priority by any means, but it’s one of the best defenses for GTD’s more fluid approach to priority.

From my experience, this works better for me than hard-assigning a priority to each task. I find that after I’ve made it a “1″ or “2″ priority item, I tend to ignore priority… and, on-the-fly, I do the things I’m able to do at a given moment (context) or have the energy to do. The official priority that I’ve attached to an item becomes meaningless, essentially.

Now, what is still meaningful to me is when the task has to be completed. That’s something concrete. I realize that due dates are questionable in true GTD, but all bibles are open to some interpretation. The reality of my work environment is that some tasks can be completed soon, and some must be completed by a certain date.

Fake Due Dates

Interestingly, I’ve discovered over time that I have a strange habit of arbitrarily assigning due dates to some tasks, not because they must be completed by then, but because I think they might be or should be. This undermines the trust in my system and adds an unnecessary psychic burden, as tasks without a concrete due date begin to pile up in the “overdue” column. That aint good. The reason I haven’t completed those tasks is because I haven’t had the time or energy to do them. Making them artificially overdue is like being punished for something that’s not my fault.

That was an important insight for me, enough to make me open my task list and remove due dates from every task that doesn’t explicitly require one. I feel a lot better already.