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The big problem I have with GTD is that there doesn't seem to be a concept of prioritizing tasks or even deleting bad tasks. What's the part of the process whe

The big problem I have with GTD is that there doesn't seem to be a concept of prioritizing tasks or even deleting bad tasks. What's the part of the process where I decide the time ROI of Task A is 10x and the ROI of Task B is 0.5x?

deleted 4y ago
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steveklabnik 4y ago
The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is where you do this sort of work. It's true that in GTD itself there's no concept of "priority" directly; it does exist implicitly in the difference between a "project" and "someday/maybe" lists. Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the list, and deprioritizing one means moving it to the someday/maybe list. Same with deleting tasks, if it's not useful, just delete it.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is where you do this sort of work. That's true, but it doesn't tell you how to prioritize. It likely can't, as there are many different methods to do so, and none stand out over the others. However, I wish the book had made it clear that this is not covered, and you should consult other resources for this. > Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the list, and deprioritizing one means moving it to the someday/maybe list Yes, but it does say that weekly/monthly you should move items from one list to the other. As I said in another comment, my someday/maybe list is hundreds of items long. How do I choose which one to put into the active projects list? It's not feasible to look at hundreds of items and just decide which ones are important. I've been using GTD for 15 years. Even if you put 30 items in the Someday/Maybe list per year (and this is conservative for me), you're looking at over 300 items by this point - especially given that of those 30, you'll probably be able to do only 3-5 in a given year.
Jtsummers 4y ago
It's been years since I read the book, and I was surprised I still had it (my wife had me do a major purge of the library a couple years back, this one apparently made the cut). Priorities are discussed in chapter 9. Deleting tasks is discussed in chapter 8 (along with the weekly review).

deleted 4y ago

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steveklabnik 4y ago

The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is where you do this sort of work. It's true that in GTD itself there's no concept of "priority" directly; it does exist implicitly in the difference between a "project" and "someday/maybe" lists. Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the list, and deprioritizing one means moving it to the someday/maybe list. Same with deleting tasks, if it's not useful, just delete it.

BeetleB 4y ago
> The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is where you do this sort of work. That's true, but it doesn't tell you how to prioritize. It likely can't, as there are many different methods to do so, and none stand out over the others. However, I wish the book had made it clear that this is not covered, and you should consult other resources for this. > Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the list, and deprioritizing one means moving it to the someday/maybe list Yes, but it does say that weekly/monthly you should move items from one list to the other. As I said in another comment, my someday/maybe list is hundreds of items long. How do I choose which one to put into the active projects list? It's not feasible to look at hundreds of items and just decide which ones are important. I've been using GTD for 15 years. Even if you put 30 items in the Someday/Maybe list per year (and this is conservative for me), you're looking at over 300 items by this point - especially given that of those 30, you'll probably be able to do only 3-5 in a given year.

Jtsummers 4y ago

It's been years since I read the book, and I was surprised I still had it (my wife had me do a major purge of the library a couple years back, this one apparently made the cut). Priorities are discussed in chapter 9. Deleting tasks is discussed in chapter 8 (along with the weekly review).