Issue 15

April 8, 2024

How to Prioritize Tasks

"What should I work on next?"

That's a question I ask myself regularly.

I'd like to share my method for prioritizing tasks. Spoiler alert: it's not grounded in science and isn't always perfect, but it helps me stay focused and move tasks across the finish line.

Whether you have to prioritize tasks for your day job or your side hustle, I think you'll find this useful.

Start with the foundation

Do you remember how to build a sand castle?

You start with the foundation. And then you stack layers on top of each other.

Your goal is to get to the top and finish the castle, but you can't get there without the previous layers or the foundation.

If you think about it, all you're doing is prioritizing the layers of the castle. The foundation comes before the top. And this prioritization is what allows you to complete the castle.

Whether you're building a new feature for your product or the MVP for your new business idea, start with a clearly defined goal. Write it down. Document it. Memorize it. Do whatever you have to do so you don't forget it. This is step one and it's essential. Without it, you won't be able to prioritize tasks.

The Matrix Overload

Sounds like a new Matrix movie, right?

What I'm talking about is a priority matrix. You can search Google and find plenty of examples. I've even used some of them before myself. They can be helpful for long-term roadmaps. However, I don't think they're practical for prioritizing tasks.

Most priority matrixes have four squares and two axes. You put items in each square based on their axis level. Some popular ones are:

• Urgency vs Importance
• Effort vs Impact

What I don't like about these is that they can be time-consuming. First, you have to figure out where to put each task in the matrix. Then, when you come back to the matrix to choose a task, you have to decide where to choose from. It's easy to say you're not going to work on high-effort / low-impact things, but sometimes you don't know the effort or impact of a task. My method for prioritizing tasks is a lot simpler.

My one-question method

Let's say you're building an MVP and need to prioritize tasks. This happened to me recently. All you have to do is ask yourself one question. It's that simple. Remember that clearly defined goal? Let's use it to help us answer the following question.

There are no maybes. If the answer is yes, put the task in the Yes box. If not, it goes in the No box. You now have an easy method to prioritize tasks and help you achieve your goal.

You might be wondering, "What about the tasks in the No box?" The answer is to keep them there…for now. They aren't tasks you never want to work on. They just don't need to be done right now.

Sometimes I will intentionally pull a task from the No box because I want to do it or need a break from the other tasks. With this method, no rule says you can't do that. What matters is that you know ahead of time whether a task is helping you reach your goal or not. And you can spend most of your time choosing tasks from the Yes box.

This method helps me focus on accomplishing goals, especially short-term ones. I spend less time planning and more time doing. I think it's better than a priority matrix. Try it out sometime and let me know if it makes a difference for you.

Project Updates

Valence

I had another helpful demo meeting last week. The person I met said he likes to think about edge cases and uncommon scenarios. This was great because it brought up some aspects of the app that I hadn't thought about.

We also met as a team and decided to create a timeline for April. Now we have due dates for sharing our feedback, analyzing it, and making a decision. It feels good to have a plan, at least for the next month.

Agendaful

Last week I worked on a few small tasks that needed to be done to prepare the app for beta.

I fixed a bug with dates in the app. They were appearing in UTC instead of the user's time zone. So I had to fetch the user's time zone from Slack and save it to the database. Also, if users ever change their time zone in Slack, my app will get notified so I can update it. This will probably be rare, but if it does happen, Agendaful will handle it!

I also updated the date filter on the app home tab. Previously there was an option to show upcoming 1:1s for this week, i.e. Monday through Sunday. However, I realized this isn't ideal if it's Friday and you want to view agendas for your one-on-ones on Monday. So I changed this option to "Next 7 days." That way if it's Friday, you'll be able to see your meetings through the following Thursday.

This week I will:

• Work on some minor updates to the app home tab view
• Create a Google form to capture feedback and bugs from initial users
• Create production versions of the Slack app and database

I'm on target to open Agendaful to some beta users by the end of the month.

One last thing…

I'm happy to share that I will be a guest speaker at an upcoming Coding with Callie meet-up. This is a newly established community to help teach and support early-career software developers.

I will speak about my focus on front-end development during my career and why I never became a full-stack developer. I'm always willing to share knowledge and help others. This should be a great opportunity to do so.

Thanks for reading this week. See you next week! 👋