Woozle/to do/archive/2009-04-04/strategy

This is about the current strategy behind the to-do list.

Problems

An ongoing problem has been that the list keeps growing faster than I can take items off of it, leading eventually to abandonment until I come back many months later, clear pretty much everything out, and start over again.

Another ongoing problem has been different areas of concern, all of which contain Uber-Urgent Items Which Must Be Done Now Or Else and which end up fighting with each other for my attention, leading to even less actually getting done.

So I've come up with a new strategy. It may or may not work, and even if it does work I consider it to be the equivalent of spit-and-baling-wire to keep things going until some of the major items on the list get Done and reduce the workload overall.

Strategy

The strategy is to group the list by "headspace". Two items are in the same headspace if and only if it is not a major act of disruption to switch my attention from one to the other. This generally means that they both involve the same set of facts and issues, or that there is at least a large overlap.

I will then allocate chunks of time, more or less as they become available, to these different headspaces. I'm putting that list on the main "to do" page, to help with scheduling the rotation.

There also are different types of urgency, which I would roughly designate thusly:

• urgent, deadline -- task multiplies greatly or fails if not done by a certain date
• urgent, no deadline -- things get worse the longer you wait, but no firm date
• ongoing -- regular things that need to be done, like paying bills and shipping
• exploratory -- things which might improve the situation considerably, but don't need to be done
• creative -- things which probably won't have any positive effect on the situation, but might have a positive effect on my mood >.<

Each day will have one or two designated "themes", which will be the main thing(s) to focus on for that day. When I ask myself the question "what am I supposed to be working on today?", the theme will be the answer. It's ok to drift over into other areas as needed, but if the official theme doesn't get enough work done on it, it comes around again to be the next day's theme. Hopefully this will be sufficient to ensure that each area gets a little attention on a regular basis without being so rigid that aversion begins to grow.