I’m grappling with an idea of how to schedule tasks/projects, how to prioritize, and how to set deadlines. I’m looking for advice, recommending readings, thoughts, etc.
The core question here is “how should we schedule and prioritize tasks whose result becomes gradually less valuable over time?” The rest of this post is just exploring that idea, explaining context, and sharing examples.
Here is a simple model of the world: many tasks that we do at work (or maybe also in other parts of life?) fall into either sharp decrease to zero or sharp reduction in value.
The sharp decrease to zero category. These have a particular deadline beyond which they offer no value, so you should really do the task before that point.
If you want to put me in touch with a great landlord to rent from, you need to do that before I sign a 12-month lease for a different apartment; at that point the value of the connection is zero.
If you want to book a hotel room prior to a convention, you need to do it before the hotel is fully booked; if you wait until the hotel is fully booked, calling to make that reservation is useless.
If you want to sharing the meeting agenda to allow attendees to prepare for a meeting, you have to share it prior to the meeting starting.
The sharp reduction in value category. You should do these tasks before the sharp reduction in value. Thus, the deadline is when value is about to sharply decrease.
Giving me food falls into the sharp sharp reduction category, because if you wait until I’ve I’m already satiated by eating a full meal, the additional food that you give me has far less value than if you had given it to me before my meal.
Setting deadlines for these kinds of tasks is, in a certain sense, simple: do it at some point before the decrease in value. But what about tasks that decrease gradually in value over time?
We can label these as the gradual reduction category.
Examples include an advertisement for a product that launched today and will be sold for the next 100 days. If I do this task today I will get 100% of it’s value, or if I do it tomorrow I will get 99% of it’s value, and so on, all the way to last day that will add any value.
I could start funding my retirement savings today or tomorrow, and the difference is negligible. In fact, the difference between any two days is tiny. But if I delay for years, then the difference will be massive. This is kind of a “drops of water in a bucket” issue: a single drop doesn’t matter, but all together they add up to a lot.
Should you start exercising today or tomorrow? Doesn’t really matter. Or start next week? No problem. Start 15 years from now? That is probably a lot worse.
If you want to stop smoking, what difference does a day make?
Which sort of leads us back to the core question. If the value decreases gradually rather than decreasing sharply, then when do you do the task?
I suppose one answer is to do the task immediately, before it has any reduction in value. But that also seems like it isn’t what we actually do. In terms of prioritizing, instead of doing everything immediately, people seem to push tasks back to the point just before they would cause problems. If I am prioritizing, I will probably try hard to to the sharp reduction in value task (orange in the below graph) before it has the reduction in value, and then I’ll prioritize the sharp decrease to zero task (blue in the graph), finally starting on my lowest priority task once the other two are finished. But that doesn’t seem optimal, right?
I’m grappling with an idea of how to schedule tasks/projects, how to prioritize, and how to set deadlines. I’m looking for advice, recommending readings, thoughts, etc.
The core question here is “how should we schedule and prioritize tasks whose result becomes gradually less valuable over time?” The rest of this post is just exploring that idea, explaining context, and sharing examples.
Here is a simple model of the world: many tasks that we do at work (or maybe also in other parts of life?) fall into either sharp decrease to zero or sharp reduction in value.
The sharp decrease to zero category. These have a particular deadline beyond which they offer no value, so you should really do the task before that point.
If you want to put me in touch with a great landlord to rent from, you need to do that before I sign a 12-month lease for a different apartment; at that point the value of the connection is zero.
If you want to book a hotel room prior to a convention, you need to do it before the hotel is fully booked; if you wait until the hotel is fully booked, calling to make that reservation is useless.
If you want to sharing the meeting agenda to allow attendees to prepare for a meeting, you have to share it prior to the meeting starting.
The sharp reduction in value category. You should do these tasks before the sharp reduction in value. Thus, the deadline is when value is about to sharply decrease.
Giving me food falls into the sharp sharp reduction category, because if you wait until I’ve I’m already satiated by eating a full meal, the additional food that you give me has far less value than if you had given it to me before my meal.
Setting deadlines for these kinds of tasks is, in a certain sense, simple: do it at some point before the decrease in value. But what about tasks that decrease gradually in value over time?
We can label these as the gradual reduction category.
Examples include an advertisement for a product that launched today and will be sold for the next 100 days. If I do this task today I will get 100% of it’s value, or if I do it tomorrow I will get 99% of it’s value, and so on, all the way to last day that will add any value.
I could start funding my retirement savings today or tomorrow, and the difference is negligible. In fact, the difference between any two days is tiny. But if I delay for years, then the difference will be massive. This is kind of a “drops of water in a bucket” issue: a single drop doesn’t matter, but all together they add up to a lot.
Should you start exercising today or tomorrow? Doesn’t really matter. Or start next week? No problem. Start 15 years from now? That is probably a lot worse.
If you want to stop smoking, what difference does a day make?
Which sort of leads us back to the core question. If the value decreases gradually rather than decreasing sharply, then when do you do the task?
I suppose one answer is to do the task immediately, before it has any reduction in value. But that also seems like it isn’t what we actually do. In terms of prioritizing, instead of doing everything immediately, people seem to push tasks back to the point just before they would cause problems. If I am prioritizing, I will probably try hard to to the sharp reduction in value task (orange in the below graph) before it has the reduction in value, and then I’ll prioritize the sharp decrease to zero task (blue in the graph), finally starting on my lowest priority task once the other two are finished. But that doesn’t seem optimal, right?