Today, I listened to a great episode of the David Allen Company podcast (opens in iTunes) called “Best Practices of Doing”. In it, David and two other GTD (Getting Things Done) coaches discussed some ways to actually do the things on your todo lists. One thing that came up was how to decide what task to actually work on from your task list.

When most people make a todo list, they feel the need to prioritize their tasks. Even since adopting GTD, I still get the urge sometimes to arrange my lists by order of importance. This is the wrong approach, however, because you can accomplish much more by thinking in terms of contexts instead. In GTD, contexts are the people, locations and tools needed to accomplish a task (e.g., a phone, your boss or at your desk). Grouping your tasks by context allows you to focus only on the tasks you can accomplish with the resources you have available. With this system, there is no place for prioritization of tasks. You simply have a list of actions for each specific context.

So once you have all of your tasks broken down by context, how do you decide what to do? Let’s say you’re waiting at the doctor’s office with only your phone and your phone context list. If you just have a couple calls to make, you don’t have to think at all; you can just start at the beginning of the list and run through your list. However, let’s say you have 10 calls on your list, and you can’t finish them all right now. What do you do now? The context list won’t help you decide at that point.

In his book, David Allen addresses this problem by giving a hierarchy of factors to use when deciding what to do. First is context, followed by time available, energy and finally priority. So, in the situation at the doctor’s office, you would look down the call list and pick the ones that fit the few minutes you’re waiting. You could also narrow it down by the effort involved in making the call. If you’re feeling run down, you might avoid calling a client to explain a new proposal. And, as a last resort, you can pick and choose among the tasks that you have time and energy for based on their importance.

The beauty of this hierarchy is that it focuses on fixed resources first. You can’t make more time, and it’s really tough to suddenly have more energy, so no matter how important it is, you just won’t be able to make a two-hour phone call waiting at the doctor’s. Priorities only come into play when you’ve whittled your list down to what’s possible.

The context list is a great tool, but what if you have pages of tasks for a single context? If you have 100 emails to write, it’s not productive to try and scan through the whole list to decide which to write first. This problem really isn’t addressed in David’s book, but in the podcast, one of the coaches brought up the idea of a daily “Hot List” of actions that you would realistically like to accomplish today. It’s important to note that this isn’t a normal todo list. The tasks all still maintain their contexts, and each day, the list is made from scratch. It’s best to think of it as pre-processing your lists a bit so it’s easier to choose tasks during the day. By using a daily Hot List, you avoid feeling overwhelmed by tasks and you can focus on a few things that will move you towards your goals. The next day, you can choose a new set of tasks.

When making the Hot List, you use a combination of priority, time and energy to decide what would best suit the day. When I make my daily list, I sit down with my calendar to figure out how much time I have that’s not taken up by meetings and other commitments. Then, I look at upcoming due dates to find tasks that need work most urgently. Finally, I pick the tasks i feel like working on the most. I’m left with a manageable list of items that I can work on during the day.

By focusing more on concrete constraints like time, tools available and energy, tasks will fit into your day more easily. And, if you implement a Hot List, you will also have a laser-focused set of tasks to guide you through your day. Give it a try and see how it works for you.