Why hand-set priorities go stale
Most tools know three or four levels: high, medium, low. The levels are not the problem. The problem is that they stand still while time passes.
- Urgency changes by itself. A deadline comes a day closer every day. The priority next to it stays where you set it two weeks ago.
- Everything becomes high. With only three levels, the top one is handed out too often. After a month twelve tasks are "high" and the level says nothing.
- Postponed work turns invisible. A task you pushed to tomorrow five times looks like a new one in the list.
- Sorting costs time. Re-ordering your list every morning spends the best half hour of the day on administration.
The other idea: let it be calculated
Instead of a level you maintain, each task gets a score that follows from what you entered and is worked out afresh every day. In Aevo five things go in:
- The deadline. The closer, the higher. Overdue counts most.
- The date you meant to work on it. Once reached or passed, the score rises.
- Your priority. Zero to three stars. It shifts the score but does not decide alone.
- The postponements. Every one counts. From the third on, the tile takes on colour.
- Time untouched. What has not been touched for long speaks up.
The result is an order that looks different on Thursday than on Monday without you doing anything.
Read it instead of trusting it
A calculated order is only useful if you can check it. In Aevo a click on a tile's score shows what it is made of: how much comes from the deadline, how much from the date, how much from the postponements. If something stands first that does not belong there, you see which entry is behind it and change that.
It is a formula, not a model. The same entries always give the same score.
What is not due should keep quiet
Prioritising also means taking things out of view:
- Pause for everything waiting on a reply. Waiting time does not count against you.
- Start date for everything that makes no sense before a certain day. Until then there is quiet.
More in tasks you keep postponing.
Important is not the same as doable
The order says what comes first. It does not say whether it is possible today. For that Aevo works with your calendar: free time between meetings against estimated effort. The tasks that still fit into today are marked on the board. The long version is in realistic day planning.
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