It’s the moment of truth: You have a half-hour free in your schedule. What do you do?
The simple answer is to trust your intuition. But with so many tasks pulling at you from different areas of your life, that’s easier said than done.
Let’s dive deeper into the three frameworks for prioritizing that we talked about in Chapter 2.
Begin by narrowing down your options using the following four criteria.
Consider the context. If you’ve divided your next actions into categories—such as Calls to Make and Computer Tasks—then you can easily pull up the list that applies to where you are and what tools you have available. Categorized lists save you the time and brain power it takes to scan through a master Next Actions list and determine which tasks you can tackle in a given context.
You can be creative with the categories of your action lists, such as creating a “Brain Gone” list for mindless tasks and a “Less Than 5-Minute” list for quick tasks. You can also make time-sensitive lists and group everything you need to accomplish before a certain deadline—for example, before you leave for a trip—into one list.
You might not need to get this specific when you’re starting out with the Getting Things Done system, but as time goes on create new lists based on what works for you.
How much time do you have? If you have only 15 minutes before your next appointment, don’t dive into something that’s going to take an hour to accomplish.
Narrowing your options to fit the time you have maximizes your productivity by making use of odd windows of time in your day, for instance while you’re on hold on the phone, waiting for a meeting to start, or sitting in the waiting room at your doctor’s office.
You have only so much physical energy and brainpower, so be realistic about your energy level and choose an action that matches. If you’re working on something mentally demanding, you’ll eventually reach a point of diminishing returns; although you might be able to push through, you’re not going to get the most productivity for your time and effort.
Instead, switch to a task that requires less effort, like calling your sister about her visit or changing your flight reservation (pull out your “Brain Gone” list). This is a great way to continue being productive while still giving your brain a rest—you’ll feel more accomplished (and perhaps energized) than if you’d stepped away from everything.
Once you’ve narrowed down your options, the big question is: What’s the biggest priority? There’s no objective answer to this question because it factors in your various roles, responsibilities, goals, and values.
In order to prioritize, consider what category of work a task falls into, which we’ll explore in the next model, as well as your six horizons, which we’ll talk about in the following model.
Think of everything you have to do in both the personal and professional areas of your life as “work.” Given that context, you face three different types of work on any given day:
People often prioritize work that shows up by default, just doing what’s in front of them and seemingly urgent. But that approach leaves them feeling behind, not in control, and bothered by every interruption.
By contrast, if you regularly invest time in defining your work and have an organized system of predefined work, you can make well-informed choices about which task to engage in at any time. This benefit plays out in a few ways:
We’ve talked about frameworks to weigh out the tasks in front of you. It’s also critical that you keep your commitments and work in balance with your bigger-picture goals, values, and responsibilities. If your boss asks you to chair a committee at work, it may seem important until you stop and consider whether devoting your time and energy to that helps you achieve your professional goals.
Think of this model as a six-story building: The ground floor deals with the daily grind while the top floor gives you the best view into the distance.
In order to keep your ground floor in line with your highest horizons, consider this example:
When you know that your relatively small to-do is helping you move in the direction you ultimately want to go in life, it helps you stay motivated, productive, and stress-free. By contrast, when you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and spending your time on tasks that don’t benefit you, it is stressful, frustrating, and anxiety-inducing.
It might seem logical to determine your priorities from the top-down—decide your life purpose, use that to define your goals, create or commit to responsibilities that move you toward those goals, and then identify projects and actions within those responsibilities. However, in practice, it’s more realistic to work from the bottom-up because getting in control of the actions in front of you frees up your mind to think about projects, which leads to higher thinking about your responsibilities, and so on.
(Shortform note: This is similar to the principle behind psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which states you can’t attend to your higher-level needs—including a sense of belonging and self-esteem—until you’ve met your basic needs for food, water, shelter, and safety.)
Follow these guidelines to work through everything from the bottom-up: