The classes of to-do, pt. 2

This was written as a reply to a forum post but it got long and felt useful enough to cross-post here.

Maybe you can invent a complementary system for tasks as well?
-- osau

I spent most of yesterday thinking about this. I'll type out some thoughts here as it might help them crystallise in my mind.

We start with the classes of to-do [22.00.0034]. Read that if you haven't.

In my mind I'm still using this P1–P4 idea. How do we feel about that, generally? It makes an internal monologue really quick! But if you didn't once run helpdesks for a living it might not be so obvious.

P4: not really a thing to-do (yet)

So P4s are easy. They're not actually things 'to-do', or if they are, you haven't decided that you really want to do them yet. You might, in the future. For now they're ideas, thoughts, lists, hopes, dreams, notes, something you just don't want to lose.

@LucyDecimal system was ~90% P4s. She loves a list. Here's a selection of mine from my re-grouping exercise yesterday:

• Re-think your iOS device home screens. Align with macOS desktop widgets?

• Tidy up your Airtable bases. Rename them, consolidate icon colours, and archive some old stuff.

• Gift idea: buy [someone] [thing].

• Make a trout & bean salad in summer.

The key with P4s is that there is absolutely no consequence whatsoever if they don't get done. If they all burned in a fire you'd be sad, but nothing bad would happen.

I am therefore convinced that P4s MUST NOT live in your task system. They're a bullet point in a note.

P1s: critically time sensitive

I'll jump straight to P1s because they're also easy. These are things that absolutely must happen and usually before a certain time.

That time is usually quite soon – pick Jemima up from saxophone practice – or regularly – pay the rent.

I only have one P1 and it is to check the account we use to pay our rent and bills, which is not our primary account, to make sure that there's enough in it. We keep it at or near that amount as it doesn't earn interest etc. So each month, on the last day of the month, Due goes off and tells me to do this.

So I think P1s MUST live in their own little world. You have so few. If you have five that's probably too many. Unless you have six kids and they all love learning brass instruments and none of them can catch the bus. But you get the idea. Use sparingly.

Because when I see Due, I never ignore Due.¹ Past me has sent me a message: this one is really important. Drop everything else.

P2s & P3s: the difficult part in the middle

Here's where it gets harder.

First, one class of to-do that we can safely handle.

Project tasks

A project task is a task in service of getting a project done. Step 89 of 121 things. It's not some isolated thing like pick Jemima up.

As a broad rule, I think these tasks can be lumped together. When you sit down to get Project Shoehorn done, you look at your list of tasks and you work through it. Perhaps some of those tasks need to be pushed out to the future and so we need to handle them differently, but a lot of them do not.

Don't clutter your P2/P3 task system with project tasks. They can probably be bullet points in a note.

Criteria for P2/P3

So the criteria for something to be a P2/P3 is that if you do not do it, there is a consequence.

That consequence might not be grave. It might just be that you feel worse about yourself. But, in your estimation, it exists.

So the question then is, what gets to interrupt you? I say only a P2 is allowed to do that: to put a notification somewhere in your life.

Because it is these notifications that are the curse. As soon as they exceed some very low threshold, they cease to be useful. Worse: they're harmful because there is something you really should do in there, but it's drowned in a sea of other stuff.

My stuff from yesterday

Yesterday -- I wish I'd taken a screenshot, damn -- I checked off 6 or 7 items that had been sitting as past-due to-dos in my system.² Not one of them had a genuine reason to be there.

Some of them were things that I should periodically do: update the forum software. If I leave that too long, it becomes harder or breaks. There is a consequence to my forum not working.

Some of them were things that I wanted to remember while I was out on a walk, and I just asked Siri to remind me this afternoon to… and that action was still there days later.

Back to notifications

Let's pretend notifications didn't exist. What would we do?

• We'd write down the things we had to-do.

• We'd try to group these to-dos in to sensible buckets of similar stuff.

  • Maybe on different pages of a notebook?

• We'd remember, on some sort of cycle, to look at each of the pages.

• We might either:

  • Just do all the stuff from one page on one day, or

  • Pull important things from different pages to a new page, and focus on that stuff.

Now substitute:

• 'sensible buckets of similar stuff' for 'your Johnny.Decimal categories', and

• 'pages of a notebook' for 'folders in your to-do system', and

• 'remember, on some sort of cycle' for 'scheduling time in your calendar',

and we have the beginnings of a system.

Should anything get to interrupt you?

What I'm struggling with here is, is there actually a difference between P2 & P3? My first thought was that P2s should be allowed to interrupt you. But the more I think on it, the more I doubt this approach.

Here's a P2 that I have: check my credit card before the 15th of the month and, if there's anything to pay, pay it.

I consider that a P2 because if I don't pay, that affects my credit rating, which is a long-term thing that I can't easily undo. Compared to a P3 which is to check that some company processed a refund as promised and I got the $50 back. If I don't do that and they forget, I stand to lose $50. But I consider that a lower consequence than a bad credit rating.

But back to interruptions. If I'm organised, and things are in neat buckets, and I trust myself to look at them regularly, why would any of them need to interrupt me?

Do categories of stuff at the same time

I need to pay my credit card at some point before the 15th. Not on the 15th. So do it every month on the 10th. And while I'm there, check all the other financial related stuff.

It's all boring, you might as well just get in a zone and do it all at once.

Now, the problem comes when you decided you'd do this on Friday at 14:00, like I did last week, then this time rolls round and you were doing something else, and you didn't actually do it.

But I wonder: could I make life simpler, calmer, more reliable, if instead of considering that as 5 things 'to-do' -- credit card, rent, etc. -- could it just be 1 thing, which is monthly financial processing.

Don't just do things randomly

Because here's another consideration. (Sorry, I know this is long. I don't mind if you've given up.)

I had a task: print your iCloud account recovery kit. I wrote that on a piece of paper on my desk.

Yesterday, I found that piece of paper. But, damned if I wasn't sure I'd done that thing. But did I? I didn't crumple the paper up, it's still here in the list. Ugh. So I get out the locked box and check and, yeah, I did it. What a waste of mental energy that was.

So don't just do things as they occur to you. No! Write them down, or check whether you already have them written down.

Put them in their categories with their friends. You know they can wait: there was no urgency whatsoever to me printing that thing.

And get to them in the cycle.

So are P2s just higher in the (same) list than P3s?

I wonder then if P2/P3 isn't just one list -- as in, one list per category -- that needs to be looked at on a cycle.

And if the P2s aren't just higher on that list than the P3s. You do them first, because they're more important.

Check the rent account. Then if you've still got time/energy, you get to the lower stuff. Did you get that $50 refund?

When I was thinking about this yesterday, I couldn't think of a situation where a P2 should be allowed to interrupt you.

Work in progress

There's more to think about here, but I'd appreciate any thoughts.