I am building a Tasks Todo app to help me to organize my professional and personal life, while at same time I learn Elixir, and this week I started to work in what I though it would be a very easy task to accomplish, Priorities.

After some brief research to confirm the levels I was wanting to use very high, high, medium, low and very low I stumble on the Franklin Covey framework, that lead me into the rabbit hole of time management and all different approaches out there, but the Franklin Covey framework really resonated with me, because of their matrix that says you that urgent things are not necessarily important things, and for being productive we should aim to spent as much time as possible in the important things.

So after some brief though on that matrix and how I would translate it into my application I decided to draw a draft for my Priority levels, inspired by the Franklin Covey framework, that will display in the user interface as Critical , Urgent , Important , Normal and Low .

The draft tries to stay agnostic of a profession, and does not go into much detail in the examples, because each individual as it’s own particularities, thus I think it should be used as a guideline, not as a set of hard rules to follow.

I would like to know your thoughts on the Priority levels draft I came up with based on the Frank Covey framework.

Please feel free to point where you disagree with in the draft or where you think I could improve it.

Also feel free to shoot out whatever methodologies/frameworks you are using to establish priorities to organize your personal and professional activities.

Do you have more examples to add into each priority level?

The draft is currently on this state:

PRIORITIES

Our professional and personal lives are made of priorities, and mastering how
to organize and prioritize our activities on a daily basis is not an easy
endeavor. Several frameworks exist, but this approach will be inspired by the
Franklin Covey framework.

Critical

Meant to be used for Important and Urgent activities.

If we have the majority of our priorities here than we are not organized at
all and/or work in a place that wants everything for yesterday, thus we
learn to organize our-selfs better and/or maybe we should start thinking in finding a new job.

To be used for:

• Important deadlines
• Crises
• Pressing important meetings
• Emergencies
• Last minute preparations

Urgent

Meant to be used for activities not important but urgent.

If urgent activities take a huge stake of our day then we must learn to
prioritize better, learn to say no to some activities, maybe delegate others,
but most important to not have activities here that could have be done before.

To be used for:

• Fixing/Resolving that thing that is causing delays/issues
• Some professional and personal emails and phone calls
• Some professional or personal meetings

Important

Meant to be used for activities not urgent but important.

Here is where we want to spent the majority of our day, because is were we are
the most productive, doing that activities that matter and moves us forward.

To be used:

• For working/participating in a professional or personal projects/activities
• To develop/create that new thing/feature that everyone keeps asking
• To Improve/Fix/Resolve that thing that everyone keeps complaining about
• For personal and professional development activities that improve ourselves
• To promote our well-being, like some hobby and/or exercise activities to
  have fun, relax and alleviate the stress

Normal

Meant to be used for activities not urgent and not important, like that routine activities
that are not essentially important, neither urgent but that you still need to go through them.

We will want to reserve some of our professional and personal day for this
type of activities, but ensuring that they will not represent a significant
part of it.

To be used for:

• Nice to haves in that professional or personal project
• Professional or personal social networking
• Some professional or personal social media interactions
• Some TV programs

Low

Meant to be used for trivial activities or activities that we are unsure if we want to put effort into.

This are probably were we will put some activities that we should not be
wasting time with, but others will deserve a chance to get through. We must be
careful to not waste too much of our day on them, and think twice if we should
spent our precious time on them.

To be used for:

• Over-engineering and/or making perfect that personal or professional project
• Archiving things
• Cleanup/Re-Organization activities in personal or professional projects
• Research that better deal(think twice if the time and effort will pay off)