Organisation
Four priority levels, and what each one should mean
In most apps a reminder priority is a coloured dot. You set it, you feel organised, and nothing about the reminder behaves any differently afterwards. A priority is only worth having if something changes as a result of it.
Why priority fields usually stop being used
Nearly everybody has abandoned a priority system at some point. It tends to fail in the same three ways.
Everything became high
Priority is set at the moment you create something, which is the moment it feels most important. Two weeks later, thirty of the forty items are High and the field has stopped carrying information.
Nothing happened differently
The urgent item and the trivial one arrived on your phone in exactly the same way, at the same volume, in the same stack. The priority existed only inside the app.
The list still sorted by date
A priority you cannot actually view by is decoration. If the only view is chronological, the most important thing on Thursday is still buried under four small things on Tuesday.
A second view of the same list
Timelee has four levels — Low, Medium, High and Urgent — and a view that reorganises around them. Switch the dashboard from the time view to the priority view and the same reminders regroup into First, Then and Later.
That is the point at which priority becomes useful rather than decorative. The time view answers "what is happening today". The priority view answers "what should I do next", and those are genuinely different questions on a morning where you are not going to get through everything.
You can raise or lower a to-do straight from its row without opening it, and drag to reorder within a level, so the ranking can be corrected in the ten seconds you have rather than in a planning session you will never hold.
- Four levels: Low, Medium, High and Urgent
- A priority view that regroups the list into First, Then and Later
- Change the level from the row itself
- Drag to reorder within a level
What to make each level mean
The levels have no inherent meaning. A system works when the four of them mean four different things to you, and when the top one is rare.
Urgent — there is a consequence today
Something external goes wrong if this does not happen: a deadline passes, a flight leaves, a dose is missed, somebody is left waiting. If more than two or three things a week are Urgent, the level has drifted.
High — it has to happen this week
No consequence today, but it will become Urgent if it is still here on Friday. This is the level that most work belongs in, and it is where the honest triage happens.
Medium — it is real but it can move
It matters, it has no edge, and nothing breaks if it slides a week. Most of a household list is Medium, and it is fine for it to be.
Low — you would like it to exist somewhere
Captured so you stop carrying it in your head. Low is a parking space, not a plan, and there is no shame in a long Low list.
The top level only works while it is rare
Urgent is a budget, not a feeling. Two or three a week is a functioning system; fifteen is a list that has quietly told you nothing matters more than anything else. If you find yourself creating a fifth level, the real fix is demoting things rather than adding room above them.
Make the priority change the behaviour
This is what separates a working system from a colour scheme. Pair the level with the settings that decide how insistent the reminder is.
Urgent gets a channel to match
Set Urgent reminders to a full-screen in-app call, or to Critical, so the label and the delivery agree with each other.
High gets a nag
A reminder that has to happen this week is exactly the kind that gets acknowledged and then dropped. The nag setting brings it back until it is done.
Urgent gets snooze turned off
If the consequence is real, the reminder should not be negotiable. Snooze is set per reminder, and Off is one of the options.
High and Urgent get a lead time
The things with consequences are the things you cannot start at the last minute. Add a pre-alarm so the warning lands while you can still prepare.
Medium and Low lean on categories
The lower two levels are better handled by context than by ranking. Filter to the category you are in and the ordering stops mattering.
Clear a level in one run
Filter to a priority and use focus mode to go through it one item at a time, rather than reading the list and reorganising it again.
A priority that does not change how the reminder reaches you is a label you are grading yourself with.
Delivery is set per reminder in Timelee, so Urgent can be made to behave urgently rather than just look it.
Give this week two Urgent items and no more
Set the level, then set the channel and the snooze to agree with it. That pairing is the whole system, and it takes about a minute.
Keep reading
- How Timelee reaches youThe rung that makes Urgent mean something.
- How to prioritise your to-do listTriage that survives a bad week.
- Reminder categoriesContext, for the levels below the top two.
- Reminder tagsA cross-cutting slice you can sort by priority.
- Tasks and to-do listsThe list these four levels are ordering.
- Planning the dayA morning pass over the buckets, then clearing it in Focus mode.