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A Guide To Prioritizing By Needs: Tasks You Should Do August 20th 2008
 Productivity
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Welcome to the second part of my guide covering prioritizing by needs, where tasks are prioritized by whether you need, should, or just want to do them. I’ve already introduced the concept and last week I discussed tasks you want to do. Today I am going to look at the next stage in the system, things you should do.
The “should” stage is really what makes this prioritization system work. If you can’t think about your workflow in commonsense terms, and the idea of juggling all your work seems alien to you, this system may not be for you. If you are a fan of Stephen Covey’s four quadrants you may see similarities between the “should” stage and the important/not urgent quadrant. In fact, that pretty much sums up this stage. You should do something because it is important (paying a bill promptly, doing coursework, responding to a phonecall) but because it’s not urgent or the deadline isn’t close (yet) it’s not something you need to do right now.
So why have this category at all? Why focus on it so much? To successfully prioritize by needs you have to funnel your workload (see the image above). Ideally, rather than being flooded by a mass of old-school high priority projects (arrow on the left), tasks should be dripfed to you based on when you really need to do them (arrow on the right). Obviously, however, this isn’t always possible and this is where tasks you should do take the focus. If you are expecting a torrent of items you need to do, you can make sure they only drip through, rather than drown you, by working on them while they are still in the “should” stage.
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