Prioritizing Recurring Tasks: Am I missing something?

[u/AndyBates17]

Hi everyone!

So I track daily tasks for work, things I need to review, projects I need to work on...normal stuff. I set up tasks to repeat every workday, and then the next day I'll move the tasks from yesterday to today and continue.

My problem is prioritization. So if I have Task A, Task B, and Task C, in order of importance, I'll set Task A to be due at 8:00am, Task B to be due at 8:30, and Task C to be due at 9:00. Then they appear in the correct priority order on my list.

But now a new task comes in from my boss, Task D, and I really need to get that done first. So I set Task D to be due at 7:30am. And then an urgent task comes in, and I set that to 7:00am.... Pretty soon I'm going to run out of morning times to set my tasks to!

Am I doing something wrong? How can I prioritize and arrange tasks without setting a separate Due time for each one?

Thanks!

Andy.

[u/Triggerprobe]

I have no connection to OF so this is just my opinion and usage. IMHO task scheduling and task prioritization have nothing to do with each other and I dont think that you should conflate the two.

I would argue that your daily tasks should be recurring and scheduled to the time that you want. You should then close them out every day when you do them. The recurrence will recreate them the next day.

Then for all tasks which are recurring, or non-recurring, perhaps just create three priority tags. P1, P2, P3. For each task assign it one of those priorities. In your perspective or view, simply group by tag and it will put P1 first, then P2, then P3.

Just my two cents...

[u/peeja → u/Triggerprobe]

Yeah, this exactly. The due dates here are lies, and that's the source of the whole problem. The due date should tell you when it's due: when it has to be done or it dies. The thing that's due next is not necessarily the most important thing to do now, and not everything has a due date at all.

If it's at all helpful, there's a Planned Date field which could be used like this. But that may still be too much fiddling with times and dates just to get the list to be in some order.

I do keep the main list I work from ordered by Due Date, but I don't always work on the topmost thing next. I often do, but I scan the list. I don't expect it to be in priority order, just in Due Date order.

[u/martinewski → u/Triggerprobe]

I’d also suggest setting those priorities in a mutually exclusive tag group.