Johnny decimal classes of todo

Johnny ‘Decimal’ Noble has created a compelling system to organise your life. While I don’t organise my complete life, it’s a hugely useful system to organise things at work.

A while back, he wrote two blog posts on “classes of todo”, in which he discusses his ideas on how a similar solution might apply to todos. They’re definitely a good read and made me think. However, coming from a “Getting things done” (GTD) background I disagree with several of his statements. Below I try to summarize my thoughts on where I personally agree and disagree as a form of slightly extended feedback.

We use the term ’task system’ vs. ’to-do system’ to move away from the term ’to-do’. Not everything you write down is something you must, one day, do.

Here Johnny makes an important distinction between a task system and a todo system. “Getting everything out of your head” is liberating but it can be overwhelming if you were thinking all of that needs to happen.

I would potentially like to define these ‘classes of to-do’ We classify these by priority: 4 is lower than 1.

I do understand the idea and it’s definitely a good approach to consider the different kinds of tasks but I think priorities should only be used deliberately and sparingly. Otherwise they can become a huge source of stress.

In my opinion there are not four but only two classes of tasks: things you commit to doing and things you don’t.

Priority 4 (P4): someday/maybe/’tickler file’ These things aren’t really ’to-dos’ at all. They’re ideas of things that you might like to do, maybe, some day.

They’re good, in other words; don’t stop writing them down. You will actually do some vanishingly small percentage of these things, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t do the rest. you MUST NOT allow these ’tasks’ to clutter the things you actually need to do.

So P4 are the tasks/things you don’t commit to or have no commitment to do. It makes perfect sense to write them down not only to get them out of your head but also to have an inventory of things you might tackle in the future.

They MUST be kept in a separate system

I don’t see why that’s important? Having a category ‘someday/maybe’ doesn’t hurt as long as you can filter it out. Having them in a separate system increases the probability you don’t look at them. Being a GTD person I think these items should be reviewed regularly as well. Otherwise you never see them and never start your ‘wild dreams’.

Priority 3 (P3): Should do/nice to do But if you do not, nothing catastrophic happens. Life goes on — with inconveniences or minor costs that your inaction has introduced, perhaps — but, nevertheless.

These things are actions: they are things ’to do’. You should do them. So they SHOULD exist in your primary task system.

In other words P3 are the first level of tasks you commit to do but they are not the most important ones. Having a gut feeling on the consequences of postponing them is definitely a good idea.

However, they MUST NOT ever nag you with an alert or alarm. If a ‘should do’ task interrupts your focus, your system is broken. these tasks MUST NOT have a ‘due date’.

In my opinion unless there is an objective external reason no task should have a due date independent of any priority.

Project subtasks You know it’s the job. You know you need to do it: writing it down is more of a memory/planning thing than a reminder/nagging thing.

I’m not sure we should think of any tasks in categories of ’nagging’ or ’notifications that interrupt’. From my point of view delaying project subtasks can lead to more than inconveniences or minor costs. Thus I wouldn’t immediately categorize them as P3. A risk I see with categorising tasks like this that they may fall through the cracks and never get done until they become a fire and crisis.

Priority 2 ( P2: To do) Now we’re in to the stuff that you really actually should do. Not kidding. These tasks SHOULD live in the same task system as your P3 tasks. P2 tasks are essentially P3 tasks but in this case you MAY set a due date.

Thus P2 are more important things you commit to doing. Again I think we should have as few tasks with a due date as possible. Since they’re in the same system anyway their cost of delay seems to be the main difference between P3 and P2.

If we can design a system with very few interruptions — one where we choose what to do, and when to do it, and where we trust ourselves to actually do that — then I think peace and harmony will prevail.

I fully agree and an approach that supports this is Personal Kanban. It also reminds me of Michael Linenberger’s MYN idea. If you pull from your list of task options things to do and classify them accordingly you feel calm. Pull instead of push is the key difference here.

Priority 1 ( P1): Catastrophic if not done

The highest priority task is that which results in catastrophe if not done. There’s a subtle subclass of P1 tasks that might be useful:

1. Completion-catastrophic
2. Time-catastrophic

I believe that this class of tasks SHOULD exist in their own task system. We’d never trust these things to our main task system because we know they’d get lost there.

This makes sense and again having a gut feeling on the consequences of postponing them is definitely a good idea. Hopefully these are only a few in your system.

Having different systems for tasks sounds cumbersome and error-prone to me. I rather think you need to review your task lists often enough. I’d rather keep them in the same system and tag them accordingly with a priority flag or a due date.

If something is truly Time-catastrophic I’d put it my calendar. This is about the only separate system I use.

Summary

In general I like the idea of P2 and P3 as a guideline you pick up at a given point in time or Engage. GTD has this notion of Context, Time available, Energy and Top-down Priorities which I personally think is too complex when choosing what to tackle next if no P1 tasks are in front of you.

On the other hand I think the ideas are useful but currently miss a few aspects

• where do tasks come from and what are the next steps once you wrote them down somewhere or Clarify and Organise in GTD terms? Johnny briefly discusses this in the second blog post but in particular the processing can help to establish what importance a task may have.
• How and when do you look at them or Reflect? it seems his thoughts on notifications come from a lack of regular checking on it.