Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Eisenhower Method - Matrix Decision Method-Covey Matrix Decision
Contro:
Do you know a free software for :
1. Urgent and Important – 1st Priority
2. Not Urgent but Important – 2nd Priority
3. Urgent but Not Important – 3rd Priority
4. Not Urgent and Not Important – 4th Priority
for windows 8.1
Best Regards
:-*
wraith808:
dont really know, but doing a quick search, i came across this link that might be helpful
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-app-or-software-that-replaces-franklin-covey-time-management-system
specifically this software : http://weekplan.net
IainB:
@Contro: Cross-posted from:
Re: Anti-procrastination Hacks: Dynamic Unordered Todo List
...It just brought home to me the fact that the name of the game is not "what to do" but "what not to do."
So the main problem is the quality of the judgement involved in prioritising. It's all too well to capture, list and order all tasks. But the main issue is to decide what to do now, today, by making very painful decisions about what not to do, temporarily, and most likely permanently. ...
_________________________________
-dr_andus (July 02, 2017, 05:36 AM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, an elementary truth that is not always easy to perceive.
The solution that I learned from a book on time management (I forget its title - I had borrowed it from a friend and returned it), some years ago, was to categorise/prioritise tasks into permutations of Urgency (criticality) and Importance:
A - Urgent and Important.
B - Not Urgent, but Important.
C - Neither Urgent nor Important.
A, B and C are mutually exclusive. Cs may become Bs and Bs may become As. Misjudged As can be demoted to Bs, but it seems unlikely that Bs will become Cs, unless one is working in total chaos.
This scheme disregards the logical 4th permutation: Urgent, but Not Important as it is a nonsense.
This scheme seems to have been based on The Eisenhower Method, which uses the concept of Immediacy (to express Urgency).
The way to work the ABC prioritisation is to concentrate on what is Urgent or likely to become Urgent - actioning the As first, maybe picking up some Bs as one goes along (if a B synchronises with the As and is likely to become Urgent and is not a diversion), but otherwise leave the Bs till you have some slack/delay time whilst/after doing the As (remember, Bs are Not Urgent - right?).
The Cs are just ignored until they become Important, and, if they never become Important, then they never need to be actioned and can safely be deleted after a while.
I have coached others in the use of this ABC scheme, and it has saved my sanity and that of those I have coached. I recall one particular incident where I coached one of the systems engineers who reported to me - a really able and intelligent guy who was in his first job. I noticed that he was having great difficulty doing all his work and was rushing around like a mad thing. After having a chat with him, I saw the problem immediately. After my coaching him on the ABC method (he picked it up in a flash), he went away and started to rigorously apply it. I had asked him to report back to me on progress after 2 days, and he did. He was overjoyed, being now on top of his work and he knew exactly what his priorities were. He thanked me profusely and said that, though he liked his job, he had been on the point of resigning as he felt like he was just being overworked beyond his coping limit. He was amazed how that simple method had changed his whole outlook on work and made his life bearable and more enjoyable.
He was able to gain a sense of achievement from the knowledge that he had the power to control his workflow and focus on doing a good job by addressing the priorities.
I originally had a simple paper-based system for the prioritised tasklists, but I later made it computer-based on a nifty relational database PIM for managing text records (Lotus Agenda). I could look at (say) all the As together, and make progress notes about them and flag them as "Done" when they had been completed (the date of setting the "Done" flag was automatically recorded), and then review the Bs to see if any warranted action or upgrading to As, and make notes about them also. I would ignore the Cs unless some event had raised the priority of one of them.
This system was easily replicated to a greater extent using the PIM InfoSelect v8, but that has become legacy software (does not run perfectly on Win10-64bit PCs) and I have now replicated it to a lesser extent by using @mouser's CHS (ClipboardHelp&Spell), which is quite versatile. I found I could extend its versatility by using the CHS Virtual Folders functionality and making fuller notes (where necessary) in MS Office OneNote - with CHS as a kind of front-end to that. It's a bit kludgy, but it works.
If the NoteFrog beta had not been prematurely pulled, I would probably have migrated from CHS to that by now, because NoteFrog was designed as a PIM, whereas CHS is not (though it originally was).
This does not mean that using CHS for the ABC scheme is not a good, workable idea - as I have proven for myself. It got even better for this purpose when the automatic SQL generator was built-in (and especially when that later had its bugs fixed). That made the CHS Virtual Folders functionality much more effective. :Thmbsup:
--- End quote ---
IainB:
@Contro: I cross-posted the above in case you might not have seen it. I would stress some salient points following on from that:
* Redundancy:
...It just brought home to me the fact that the name of the game is not "what to do" but "what not to do."
So the main problem is the quality of the judgement involved in prioritising. It's all too well to capture, list and order all tasks. But the main issue is to decide what to do now, today, by making very painful decisions about what not to do, temporarily, and most likely permanently. ...
_________________________________
-dr_andus (July 02, 2017, 05:36 AM)
--- End quote ---
* Non-priorities:
"This scheme disregards the logical 4th permutation: Urgent, but Not Important as it is a nonsense."
However, note the idea that:
"Unimportant/Urgent quadrant are delegated[12] e.g. interruptions, meetings, activities.[11]" - Wikipedia - Time management.
--- End quote ---
* Driving force:
The user is the driving force. The ToDo list is a tool. Don't let the tool become the master.
Elimination of non-priorities
Time management also covers how to eliminate tasks that do not provide value to the individual or organization.
According to Sandberg,[26] task lists "aren't the key to productivity [that] they're cracked up to be". He reports an estimated "30% of listers spend more time managing their lists than [they do] completing what's on them".
Hendrickson asserts[27] that rigid adherence to task lists can create a "tyranny of the to-do list" that forces one to "waste time on unimportant activities". - Wikipedia - Time management.
--- End quote ---
(Interestingly, one could have observed this principle in operation in computer systems - e.g., when testing some of the early IBM DB2 transaction-queuing algorithms - under some load circumstances the queue could never be completed because the overly-sophisticated algorithm ended up in a bind where it was perpetually re-arranging the priorities. So it just "hung".)
Some relevant software: (essentially, most freeform databases or wikis would probably do).
* Lotus Agenda (DOS-based, highly-sophisticated freeform text database). Freeware (Released into the public domain by IBM).
* CHS (Clipboard Help and Spell) - a sophisticated Clipboard Manager, using a database. Donationware.
* InfoSelect - PIM/Freeform Database (a fairly sophisticated and flexible PIM). Paid software.
* InfoBase - PIM/Freeform Database (a text-based PIM, similar to the original InfoSelect.) Freeware.
* InfoQube - PIM/Freeform Database (a fairly sophisticated and flexible PIM; also includes Gantt-type planning, by default.) Paid software.
* See also software listed at:
- Wikipedia - Getting Things Done
- Wikipedia - Time management
tomos:
I later made it computer-based on a nifty relational database PIM for managing text records (Lotus Agenda). I could look at (say) all the As together, and make progress notes about them and flag them as "Done" when they had been completed (the date of setting the "Done" flag was automatically recorded), and then review the Bs to see if any warranted action or upgrading to As, and make notes about them also.
-IainB (July 15, 2017, 10:38 PM)
--- End quote ---
I'm not well up on relational databases, but see that Pierre has just created a sample file for using InfoQube (IQ) as a relational database:
IQ as a Relational Database: Book Review Process
InfoQube is not a relational database, this, by-design. Using a number of features however, it can handle tasks which are traditionally handled by relational database systems.
--- End quote ---
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/3962
Can be discussed here (IQ forums) or just here I'm sure, (but have yet to look closer at it myself).
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version