Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Automatic quadrants using priorities and due dates
We recently covered an Eisenhower matrix to separate important and urgent tasks. We thought we’d, well, square things off with another take on quadrants. This week’s tip, shared by cek1227, suggests 5 quadrants – yes, 5! – to prioritize your tasks.
The Four Quadrants from Covey are very helpful, but not conducive to how I go through tasks. So, I’ve put together the following scheme - it’s 5 quadrants, but who’s counting?
Go through the GTD daily review to adjust due dates and priorities. Only put due dates on things that really have due dates.
Priorities mean:
• 1 - Must do
• 2 - Should do
• 3 - Might do
• 0 - Could do
The “quadrants” are the following Smart Lists:
• Q1: Must do today: dueBefore:tomorrow AND priority:1
• Q2: Should do today or must do soon: (dueBefore:tomorrow AND priority:2) OR (due:never AND priority:1)
• Q3: Might do today or should do soon: (dueBefore:tomorrow AND priority:3) OR (due:never AND priority:2)
• Q4: Could do today or might do soon: (dueBefore:tomorrow AND priority:none) OR (due:never AND priority:3)
• Q5: Someday: due:never AND priority:none
Process Q1 as much as possible, then Q2 and then Q3. If there’s any time left, do Q4. Review Q5 on your weekly review. For ease of list management, the Smart List I use to show Q2 also includes Q1, so that I can see everything in one place. Likewise, the Smart List I use to process Q3 also shows Q1 and Q2. If that’s too busy, don’t do it.
Keep your due dates and priorities right on a daily basis, and this helps keep the main thing the main thing. From these Smart Lists, I also have related Smart Lists for each of my contexts (work, home, other).
Thanks for sharing this tip, cek1227! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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