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Do people really have this hard of a time deciding what task to do? If you have something that needs doing urgently, then do that. Otherwise... it just depends?
by seanw444 4y ago
Do people really have this hard of a time deciding what task to do? If you have something that needs doing urgently, then do that. Otherwise... it just depends? There's no one-size-fits-all solution.
- JamesBarney 4y agoThis might work when working at large companies, but when running my own startup the problem is the urgent tasks will smother the important ones.
- simonw 4y agoI've long thought that the single hardest problem in startups is prioritization: figuring out the most important thing to build (or do) next.
- yaseer 4y agoStrongly agree with this. One thing I realised is, startups should spend more time optimising the decision of their top priority, and less time optimising efficiency. There's no point working on the wrong thing with 100% efficiency.
- Throw10987 4y agoI have seen teams spending most of their time on working on the highest priority (by a single measure) and not spending any time on overall delivery efficiency. So having a balanced prioritisation approach would seem to be pretty important.
- seadan83 4y agoAgree to this. My personal thesis is paying the cost of doing it quickly is not payed months in a nebulous future, but often mere _hours_ A good bit of literature is starting to dispel the notion of the iron triangle, speed is quality, quality is speed.
- ozim 4y agoIt also is that while building new product often there is no single thing that is urgent but everything needs to be done.
- nerdponx 4y agoSometimes the exercise of explicitly trying to quantify and compare urgency, importance, and cost helps you develop a better understanding of the project, which leads to a better work plan.
- hacker_junky 4y agoGood question! Do you have a personal strategy for deciding which task to prioritize, if any?
- comboy 4y agoIt is a very complex function which takes into account all your previous experiences, your value system and your estimations regarding the future. Good news though! Your brain already computed it, and presents you the answer in the form of "I want to do that thing right now". Quick debug sheet: - my brain in wrong, what I want is not what I should - are you sure? Figure out your narration. If you ever have been excited about some project you know how well your "want" will align with your "should". You may be stuck in some story about yourself which you haven't updated. - I want it all! Yeah you are really still just looking, if you are not sure what you want, that's not really a problem. It's fine to not want anything in particular. If you keep telling yourself you really want it all just choose at random, and then when you "have time" slowly and patiently explain yourself that your time is finite, and amount of ideas you can come up with, not necessarily. I suggest also trusting yourself with this. Worst case scenario you spend some time doing the thing you wanted to do and observing that will be a valuable data point (automatically integrated) into your future "I want to". edit: I answered it in the context of personal lists, startups have much simpler optimization function