GTD and the Hot List
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.
