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Now, Next, Later, Never - A Simple Daily Framework for Managing Information and Prioritization

Summary

This episode introduces a simple, practical framework for managing daily information flow and prioritization. The host explains that the core insight is understanding the lifecycle of information and how to process it effectively without getting overwhelmed by complex productivity systems.

The method begins with creating “incoming” documents for different channels of information (teams, projects, personal life) where raw thoughts and notes can be captured during meetings, work sessions, or whenever new information appears. These documents serve as temporary holding areas before analysis, separating the act of gathering information from deciding what to do with it.

Once information is collected, the framework provides four time-based buckets for prioritization: Now (critical, immediate actions), Next (important upcoming tasks), Later (deferred items), and Never (actively rejected tasks). The host emphasizes that Now should contain only one item at a time, while Next should be limited to 1-2 items to maintain flexibility and focus on daily priorities.

The framework is intentionally simple and portable, designed to complement rather than replace existing productivity systems. It works best for short-term planning (today, tomorrow, maybe the next few days) and helps create a clear surface for dealing with daily unpredictability while maintaining focus on what truly matters in the moment.

Recommendations

Concepts

  • Eisenhower Matrix — Mentioned as a reference point for understanding the relationship between urgency and importance, though the host notes this framework temporarily ignores that distinction for simplicity.
  • Get Things Done (GTD) method — Referenced as a more complex productivity system that this simpler framework differs from, particularly in that this method doesn’t immediately create tasks from incoming information.
  • Not-to-do list — A concept discussed in relation to the ‘Never’ bucket, where you actively choose tasks you will not spend time on to protect your priorities from interesting but non-essential distractions.

Tools

  • Text editor or note-taking app — The framework relies on having a text editor or note-taking application to create and manage incoming documents. The host mentions options like Notion, Obsidian, Reflect, or Apple Notes, emphasizing the need for easy navigation between notes.
  • Unblocked — A sponsor tool that helps engineering teams find context about their codebase by surfacing information from GitHub, Slack, JIRA, Confluence and other tools directly next to the code, reducing time spent searching for information.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:13 — Introduction to a simple daily management framework — The host introduces a simple framework for dealing with day-to-day complexity in work and personal roles. The framework simplifies more complex self-management and prioritization techniques, relying primarily on tools everyone already has access to like text editors or notebooks. The power comes from simplicity and portability, focusing on the lifecycle of information.
  • 00:03:50 — Creating incoming channels for information capture — The first step is identifying all possible incoming information channels that matter - teams, reports, managers, family, etc. For each channel, create a free-form text document named with “incoming” to capture raw thoughts and information as it appears. This separates information gathering from analysis, allowing you to capture details during meetings or work sessions without immediately deciding what to do with them.
  • 00:10:18 — The importance of analyzing incoming information — Incoming information only becomes valuable when refined through analysis. The host recommends finding regular time to review these notes and convert them into actionable items. While writing things down can help memory, the real value comes from transforming information into actionable locations that drive productivity and focus.
  • 00:14:56 — Introducing the four-bucket prioritization framework — The core framework uses four time-based buckets for prioritizing information: Now, Next, Later, and Never. This approach centers around time as your most critical asset - something everyone has in equal measure but cannot increase. The framework helps determine when specific actions should be taken based on incoming information analysis.
  • 00:16:06 — Understanding the ‘Now’ bucket for urgent items — The ‘Now’ bucket typically contains urgent items that require immediate attention, like critical production bugs affecting users. The host acknowledges the relationship between urgency and importance (referencing the Eisenhower Matrix) but notes this framework temporarily ignores that distinction. Only one thing can be in ‘Now’ at a time since we can only do one thing at once.
  • 00:19:00 — Defining the ‘Next’ bucket for upcoming priorities — The ‘Next’ bucket should contain the most important upcoming tasks, ideally limited to one or two items. This keeps the list flexible enough to adapt to daily unpredictability. Between ‘Now’ and ‘Next,’ you should have about 3-4 important things to accomplish each day, which will likely consume most of your working time.
  • 00:21:13 — Exploring ‘Later’ and ‘Never’ buckets for deferral and rejection — The ‘Later’ bucket contains items that aren’t currently important enough for immediate attention but may be addressed later. The ‘Never’ bucket is for actively choosing not to take action on certain information, creating a “not-to-do” list. This helps prevent interesting but non-essential tasks from cannibalizing time from more important priorities.
  • 00:24:05 — Framework limitations and integration with other systems — The host acknowledges weaknesses in this simple framework: it doesn’t track deadlines well, lacks granular sorting, and isn’t designed for long-term planning. The framework works best as a supplemental tool for short-term focus (today/tomorrow) that can integrate with existing systems like Todoist, backlogs, or other productivity methods for more comprehensive planning.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2024-07-17T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:26:21

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Happy Wednesday in today’s episode.

[00:00:13] I’m going to share with you a small framework, very simple framework that

[00:00:20] you can use to deal with some complexity that you might be experiencing in

[00:00:27] your day-to-day work and your day-to-day role.

[00:00:31] And I want to share this with you because there’s something I’ve

[00:00:34] been using in my job, uh, that I think is, uh, it kind of simplifies

[00:00:42] a lot of different, uh, much more complex, uh, self-management techniques

[00:00:49] and, and prioritization techniques that you might find, um, this is a very

[00:00:54] simple framework, um, that I’m using and it relies on essentially one

[00:01:00] primary tool, one primary tool I use that everyone has, if you have a

[00:01:05] computer, you have this, even if you have a notebook, you have this a

[00:01:08] little bit harder to manage, uh, kind of the longer run on the notebook,

[00:01:13] maybe a little bit harder to, uh, to learn from, you know, your history

[00:01:18] in a notebook, I do find that for parts of this, uh, having some duplication

[00:01:24] is okay, right?

[00:01:26] So what that means is you may want to use your notebook for parts and

[00:01:30] pieces of what I’m about to talk about, but the system is so simple that you

[00:01:35] can kind of intuitively pick it up, uh, as you are, you know, going through

[00:01:42] your day planning, as you’re going through your week planning, whatever

[00:01:45] your planning exercises are to get your stuff ready and a lot of the power

[00:01:50] here comes from the simplicity.

[00:01:52] That’s the important thing.

[00:01:53] First to note a lot of the power in this, uh, in the setup that I’m

[00:01:57] giving you here is in its simplicity, in its portability, you know, you

[00:02:03] can kind of add and remove from it how you would like to, uh, but the basic

[00:02:07] idea here is to think about the life cycle of information, right?

[00:02:12] That’s the core kind of insight that I want you to take away, uh, or, or

[00:02:17] take with you, um, as you, as you move into your work, okay, as you, as you

[00:02:23] try to apply this, um, this method.

[00:02:28] So the method is very simple.

[00:02:29] Make sure you have some kind of text editor.

[00:02:32] Hopefully you’re opening one right now.

[00:02:34] Um, if you’re, if you’re, uh, you know, driving, of course, don’t worry about

[00:02:38] it right now, come back to this later.

[00:02:41] Uh, if you have, um, you know, if it’s just a notes editor, then this might

[00:02:46] be a little bit more difficult.

[00:02:47] Something like notions, something like obsidian, uh, you know, something

[00:02:51] like, uh, reflect any of these would work fine.

[00:02:57] The idea is to have some kind of way, uh, to, to jump between notes.

[00:03:02] Uh, your Apple notes can do this, but it’s a little bit more unwieldy.

[00:03:07] Benefit of Apple notes, of course, is that it’s, you know, if you’re in

[00:03:10] the Apple ecosystem, it just kind of transfers from device to device pretty

[00:03:14] easily, but you can get that set up for, of course, notion, all these other tools

[00:03:20] essentially support that as well.

[00:03:22] All right.

[00:03:23] So, uh, this is a, this is much more, um, kind of concrete practical

[00:03:27] than we normally get on the show.

[00:03:28] But the reason that I’m giving you all this information is so you

[00:03:31] can go and try this out.

[00:03:32] Realistically, this is a very, uh, kind of fly, uh, a, a principles driven

[00:03:39] approach to managing your, your incoming information.

[00:03:44] Right.

[00:03:45] That’s really what this is about.

[00:03:47] So that’s the first step in this exercise.

[00:03:50] I want you to identify all of the possible incoming channels that you care about.

[00:03:58] For example, you may have incoming channels for each of the teams that you’re on,

[00:04:03] or you may have incoming channels for each of your reports, maybe an incoming

[00:04:08] channel to, uh, to capture information that you care about for your, uh, direct

[00:04:15] manager, you may have an incoming channel for information about your home or about

[00:04:23] your family, you get to decide what this incoming kind of inbox is.

[00:04:29] Now, the important thing about these incoming channels is that whenever you

[00:04:33] encounter information that is relevant to that channel, you start here, right?

[00:04:39] This is a free form text document.

[00:04:41] There’s so much you can do with this free form text document.

[00:04:45] It starts as raw thoughts in this space.

[00:04:48] So the first step again is to identify where do you have kind of commonly have

[00:04:56] information incoming that is relevant to a particular thing, right?

[00:05:02] So try to create these kind of, uh, and maybe you have short-lived incoming

[00:05:06] documents, uh, notes, whatever you want to call these things, this free form text,

[00:05:11] an incoming, a short-lived incoming document for a project, for example.

[00:05:18] Now this might sound familiar to you if you’ve used, uh, kind of a, the,

[00:05:22] the get things done method.

[00:05:23] Um, the, the difference here is that we’re not really counting, we’re

[00:05:28] not really creating tasks yet.

[00:05:30] This is the information, uh, pure information that you may or may not know

[00:05:34] what you’re going to do with it yet.

[00:05:36] It’s not necessarily actionable.

[00:05:39] It may just be information that you need to document, file away for reference later.

[00:05:45] Of course, you know, that, that filing does take effort, but you have these

[00:05:50] incoming documents to start here.

[00:05:53] And my recommendation is to actually name these notes with the word

[00:05:59] incoming in them.

[00:06:00] And that’s, that’s important for, uh, you know, your quick fuzzy

[00:06:04] searching or whatever.

[00:06:05] So you can quickly jump to the note.

[00:06:07] Whenever you’re in a meeting, you always have your incoming, you know, an incoming

[00:06:11] note available to you when you’re in your meeting.

[00:06:14] If you’re actively working on a ticket, if you’re actively working on a project,

[00:06:17] you have an incoming document open, ready to take notes as you’re working.

[00:06:23] So the important bit here is that we encounter information in the moment.

[00:06:28] As we’re in a meeting, we are encountering information as we’re, you

[00:06:33] know, working on, uh, you know, a ticket from the backlog, we’re encountering

[00:06:37] new information as we’re taking an interview, we’re encountering new information.

[00:06:43] These are all in process and it’s difficult to, uh, to kind of comprehend

[00:06:49] that information in the moment and to create some kind of action as a basis,

[00:06:55] uh, or, or on the basis of that new information, because it’s so new, we

[00:07:01] haven’t necessarily synthesized it into what we want to do about it.

[00:07:06] So if you’re like me, uh, then taking down this information for synthesis

[00:07:12] and analysis after the fact is a critical part of your workflow.

[00:07:16] And that’s what I’m suggesting you do here, uh, with these two or, or

[00:07:20] with these incoming documents, right?

[00:07:22] In your notes sections, you can kind of, uh, adjust this however is useful for you.

[00:07:29] You might create sections in these documents, uh, to, to help you

[00:07:33] kind of go through that process.

[00:07:35] Maybe there’s a raw, a raw incoming information section.

[00:07:39] And then there’s, uh, you know, you might have, uh, more refined thoughts

[00:07:45] that go towards the bottom of the document, that may be your process.

[00:07:48] Or, uh, if you use some of these note taking applications, you

[00:07:51] can nest documents underneath.

[00:07:52] So it’s possible that you could nest these incoming, you know, uh, kind

[00:07:57] of refined incoming or raw incoming.

[00:08:00] Uh, the whole idea here though, is to have a very easy way to, uh, take

[00:08:07] in information that you know, could be actionable.

[00:08:12] You don’t know what the action is yet, but if you’re, again, if you’re like me,

[00:08:17] you probably have a bunch of these notes that you’ve started knowing that there

[00:08:21] might be something in there, but you didn’t really go back to it.

[00:08:24] There wasn’t really a clear process for how do I return to the notes that matter?

[00:08:29] And so this is how we end up with all of these artifacts that are all kind of,

[00:08:34] uh, everywhere you have all these, uh, Google docs that are connected to, to

[00:08:39] your calendar meetings and stuff like that.

[00:08:41] This, this can be unwieldy and you never really know what, what is important here.

[00:08:46] Where’s the actual information that I need to pay attention to.

[00:08:49] So this method that I’m providing you here is one way to start down the path

[00:08:55] of collecting that information, uh, and separating it at one level, right?

[00:09:02] There’s, there’s just one level of separation here.

[00:09:05] We don’t necessarily have to attach, uh, information to a meeting, right?

[00:09:11] That meeting is likely about a category that is more or less top level in your

[00:09:18] life.

[00:09:19] And again, those, those kind of top level categories might be teams, they

[00:09:23] might be people, it’s just the context that you care about that has sufficient

[00:09:29] information incoming that you would consider it a category.

[00:09:32] So this means you’re probably adding to these documents on a daily or

[00:09:37] at least a weekly basis.

[00:09:38] That’s kind of the heuristic for, you know, when these documents become useful.

[00:09:44] If you’re not adding to it enough over time, then it’s likely that this

[00:09:48] information is fractured or fragmented, uh, to the degree that it’s not

[00:09:53] incredibly useful to you.

[00:09:55] It’s probably adding more kind of, uh, digital clutter than it is

[00:10:01] helping you be more productive.

[00:10:04] So we’ve already kind of separated the incoming recording of this information

[00:10:11] away from the analysis of the information.

[00:10:13] So next, uh, you need to find the time that makes sense for you to do that

[00:10:18] analysis, right?

[00:10:19] This incoming information is only as valuable as it is refined.

[00:10:23] In other words, if you’re just taking these notes and then you never go back

[00:10:27] to them, you never do anything with that information, uh, while it may help kind

[00:10:31] of solidify that information in your brain.

[00:10:33] There’s some research that actually says that writing things down, even if you

[00:10:37] turn around and throw that piece of paper away, uh, can, can actually help

[00:10:41] you remember things a little bit better.

[00:10:43] Uh, even if that’s true, it’s much more valuable if you can actually convert

[00:10:48] these things into actionable locations.

[00:10:51] What are those locations?

[00:10:52] That’s what we’re going to talk about right after we talk about today’s sponsor.

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[00:12:35] So we’re talking a little bit about ways of dealing with incoming information.

[00:12:40] And I know that this is at the risk of sounding like, you know, just

[00:12:44] another productivity podcast.

[00:12:46] That’s not our intention here.

[00:12:48] Instead, the goal here is to improve the quality of your information gathering.

[00:12:55] The offshoot of this is possibly a productivity increase, but really the

[00:13:01] goal is instead to focus on the quality of the information and

[00:13:04] the quality of your actions.

[00:13:07] The most important part of this is recognizing that information requires

[00:13:13] some kind of response in order for you to glean any value from that information.

[00:13:22] In other words, the information you learn in a meeting, it may be that

[00:13:28] there’s something for you to do with that information and you need to

[00:13:31] understand what it is that you need to do.

[00:13:34] It starts with gathering the information in the first place, but then moving

[00:13:39] on to that analysis part, right?

[00:13:42] So it may be that at the end of a meeting, you review the notes for 10 minutes

[00:13:46] and you try to figure out, okay, what parts of this actually are actionable for me?

[00:13:50] What can I do with this information?

[00:13:52] What does it imply?

[00:13:53] What can I connect it to?

[00:13:54] Are there other parts, other things that I’ve been working on that this connects to?

[00:14:00] I’m going to give you a basic framework for what to do with this information

[00:14:05] once you’ve collected it, once it’s in your kind of incoming document, right?

[00:14:12] What do you do with it?

[00:14:13] And there may be a lot of answers to this question.

[00:14:16] I don’t want to oversimplify, you know, how you, you know, deal with information,

[00:14:23] but I am going to provide a simple pathway of prioritization.

[00:14:28] Okay.

[00:14:28] A very simple pathway as you’re reading through these incoming pieces of information.

[00:14:34] And hopefully you’re doing this soon enough after the information has landed

[00:14:38] that you haven’t lost the context.

[00:14:40] And it’s really acting as more of like a reminder of the information itself.

[00:14:43] But as you’re reading through this in, in kind of analysis mode after the fact,

[00:14:49] I encourage you to try to find one of four locations for this information.

[00:14:56] Okay.

[00:14:56] And so these four locations are mostly centered around your most critical asset,

[00:15:02] which is time.

[00:15:04] This is an asset that you cannot increase and you cannot decrease

[00:15:09] and everyone has the same amount of it.

[00:15:11] So this asset is your most critical because it is the most limited

[00:15:15] and the one that you have more critically, the least control over, right?

[00:15:20] So these, this orientation to time and information flow over time is,

[00:15:28] is kind of the core principle of this, of this framework in the first place.

[00:15:33] So as you’re reading through this information, I want you to try to

[00:15:37] ask yourself where on a timeline is this actionable?

[00:15:44] When specifically should I take action?

[00:15:48] And I’m gonna give you four buckets for this.

[00:15:49] Okay.

[00:15:51] Now, next, later, and never.

[00:15:58] Now, next, later, never.

[00:16:02] We’re going to talk about each of these.

[00:16:04] What fits in now?

[00:16:06] Most of the time, the things that are in now, specifically as it relates

[00:16:12] to incoming information, okay.

[00:16:15] Most of the things that end up in now tend to be urgent.

[00:16:19] And this is only because of the structure of this exercise.

[00:16:24] If you just got off of a meeting where you learned that there’s a critical bug

[00:16:28] that needs to be addressed in your production software that’s causing,

[00:16:32] you know, thousands of, of users problems.

[00:16:35] This is a now problem, right?

[00:16:38] This is something that requires immediate attention.

[00:16:42] Now we do think it makes sense here to mention the relationship

[00:16:46] between urgency and importance and identify the fact that not everything

[00:16:51] that is urgent is important.

[00:16:53] Not everything that’s important is urgent.

[00:16:56] The Eisenhower matrix is what this is.

[00:16:58] If you want to Google that, uh, later, but in this case, we’re kind of ignoring

[00:17:04] that, uh, that matrix for the moment.

[00:17:08] If you want to incorporate something like that to decide, okay, you know,

[00:17:11] what ordering do I try to impose on the, on the list of things that are next?

[00:17:16] That’s okay.

[00:17:17] But we’re not trying to get into how do you prioritize a long list of things.

[00:17:23] There are plenty of other frameworks that can do that.

[00:17:25] Most of the time on the day to day, uh, you probably don’t have the ability

[00:17:31] to get to more than a couple of very important things.

[00:17:35] And so this kind of four bucket prioritization method

[00:17:39] should be sufficient for most days.

[00:17:41] But the weakness here that I’ll kind of identify in this method is

[00:17:46] it is in some ways, uh, it could lean towards being more reactive.

[00:17:52] So I’d encourage you to balance this out with, uh, longer term thinking

[00:17:57] and planning that you put into your incoming list.

[00:18:01] Okay.

[00:18:02] This is another kind of source of information.

[00:18:05] Don’t just use, you know, these out, these external channels where other

[00:18:10] people are driving that information.

[00:18:12] You can drive that information yourself, right?

[00:18:15] So the raw thoughts that you have, uh, about an important topic, uh, you know,

[00:18:20] about a project that you want to be proactive about, you can have raw thoughts

[00:18:24] that you put into your incoming document in the same way that you would during

[00:18:28] a meeting or, you know, during a working session.

[00:18:32] Okay.

[00:18:32] So we’ve arrived at this idea that we have four buckets.

[00:18:37] First is the now we’ve already kind of covered this.

[00:18:40] This is critically important things that take precedence over anything

[00:18:44] else that you’re doing.

[00:18:45] And unsurprisingly, only one thing can be done at a time.

[00:18:51] So whatever’s in now is the only thing that can be in now.

[00:18:56] The next most important things, hopefully you guessed it, go in next.

[00:19:00] In a perfect world, the things that go in next are limited to maybe one or two things.

[00:19:08] This sounds crazy because we’re all used to, uh, identifying lists like, uh,

[00:19:15] backlog items for a sprint.

[00:19:17] But the truth is, most of the time in our lives, we have enough unpredictability

[00:19:22] that we need to make decisions, uh, on a much shorter basis.

[00:19:29] So you need to be able to, uh, you know, adjust what is in next.

[00:19:35] You might have something come up that you need to deal with and next needs

[00:19:39] to stay flexible and small in order to quickly make those decisions in the moment.

[00:19:44] So that’s now, and next between the two of these, you should be looking at

[00:19:50] maybe three or four important things that you need to get done in a given day.

[00:19:54] And that’s probably going to be most of your day.

[00:19:57] That’s the interesting part of this.

[00:19:59] I would challenge anybody who disagrees with this, uh, go through your day,

[00:20:04] try using this framework for a week and let me know how many times you get past

[00:20:10] and let me know how many times you get past the later, uh, or, or next rather, uh, column.

[00:20:18] If you don’t get past it, uh, very often, then you’ve probably reached kind of the,

[00:20:23] uh, the expected utility of the now and the next column.

[00:20:28] Now you’re putting too much in the next column if you don’t get to it

[00:20:32] for, you know, a couple of days, right?

[00:20:35] That’s very unlikely, especially if you go past a week, right?

[00:20:40] This framework is flexible.

[00:20:41] There’s no hard line rules here.

[00:20:43] It’s possible to use this framework up to, uh, you know, three or four, maybe five days

[00:20:48] at a time where now and next covers five days worth, uh, of tasks.

[00:20:55] But I wouldn’t go much more beyond that because now the granularity,

[00:20:59] because we only have four buckets of granularity here.

[00:21:02] If you have more than a week’s worth of work that’s in next,

[00:21:05] it’s unlikely that you have enough prioritization between those items.

[00:21:10] And that brings us to the last two buckets.

[00:21:13] Uh, one is later.

[00:21:15] Okay.

[00:21:15] So this is essentially saying we, you know, there’s more important things to deal with.

[00:21:20] This is not something I’m going to actively invest time thinking about.

[00:21:23] We’re going to put it into later.

[00:21:25] We’re going to deal with this at a later time.

[00:21:28] All right.

[00:21:29] And finally, never.

[00:21:32] This is the kind of information that comes in that we might, uh, be able to take action on.

[00:21:40] But because we can’t take action on everything, we need to have a way of, of actively choosing

[00:21:46] not to take action on a significant chunk of the incoming information that we receive.

[00:21:52] This is very much in keeping with the concept of a not to do list.

[00:21:56] If you’ve heard of this concept, uh, we’ve talked about it on the show before.

[00:22:00] And the idea is to actively choose things you will not spend your time on.

[00:22:05] These, these are things that tend to be a little bit, uh, insidious.

[00:22:10] They tend to be interesting enough that we might consider spending our time on them, right?

[00:22:15] This is, this is the part that makes it, uh, difficult to, uh, to parse sometimes.

[00:22:21] We imagine that, uh, you know, this thing that seems like a good use of our time.

[00:22:27] We take a note on that.

[00:22:28] We imagine that we might participate in it, but when we look at all of our priorities,

[00:22:32] we simply don’t have enough time to actually participate in that thing.

[00:22:36] Right.

[00:22:36] Or there are more important stuff, uh, that comes before it.

[00:22:40] So if we were to try to put it into the next column, if we were to try to prioritize that,

[00:22:46] we’re going to cannibalize our other more important things.

[00:22:49] That’s a very basic idea of the not to do list.

[00:22:52] So we explicitly say never, we’re not going to do this thing.

[00:22:56] We’ve decided not to do it.

[00:22:58] And we, uh, you know, we reduce or kind of just simply remove it from those incoming documents.

[00:23:04] So the end state here, uh, is to have a final document that kind of shows

[00:23:11] your highest priority things for the day.

[00:23:14] All right.

[00:23:14] This, this should be a list.

[00:23:16] Again, it’s kind of an active list.

[00:23:18] Uh, you know, if something comes in faster than you can process it through your incoming

[00:23:23] document, that’s okay.

[00:23:24] You may have, you know, something that comes in that you have to deal with immediately,

[00:23:29] that you didn’t really have, you know, a moment of incoming to deal with it.

[00:23:33] You just know that you have to go into it.

[00:23:35] You know, this, this method allows for flexibility for those kinds of things.

[00:23:41] Really all this does is it provides you a very simple, uh, surface for dealing with

[00:23:46] your day to day.

[00:23:48] This is much, uh, much less overhead than trying to implement a full get things done,

[00:23:54] uh, process through, you know, uh, something like to do us.

[00:23:59] There’s a space or there’s a place for those more involved methods that have longer

[00:24:05] running, you know, the, the, the weaknesses of the method that I’ve presented today.

[00:24:09] Like for example, you know, uh, one of the weaknesses is it doesn’t really track

[00:24:13] deadlines.

[00:24:14] So you may have something that doesn’t really come up in your, uh, information gathering

[00:24:19] today or next week, but you know, you have to do it.

[00:24:21] You have to do it by a certain deadline.

[00:24:23] You have that tracked, uh, but it’s not in your next, it’s in your later column.

[00:24:28] And you haven’t really, uh, you know, you haven’t really taken, uh, direct action on

[00:24:33] that thing, but you know, you’ll have to, right?

[00:24:36] This, this is a kind of a weakness of the system because, uh, you know, you can’t really

[00:24:40] sort very easily with this.

[00:24:42] There’s not a lot of granularity in the information.

[00:24:45] This is why I say, you know, this is really a supplemental.

[00:24:49] You could use your todoist.

[00:24:50] You could use your backlog.

[00:24:52] You could use whatever these other tools are to inform this tool, to inform this

[00:24:57] kind of mini framework.

[00:24:59] It’s really intended to be zoomed in on today, tomorrow, maybe the next day.

[00:25:05] Again, this implies that, you know, maybe not necessarily weakness, but a designed,

[00:25:10] uh, uh, restriction here is this is not really useful for long-term planning, right?

[00:25:14] That’s not the goal of this particular framework.

[00:25:17] This is to wrangle the things that you do need to take action on in the, you know, in

[00:25:23] the short term.

[00:25:24] I hope you find this useful.

[00:25:26] I hope you find the idea of kind of pairing this with other frameworks that you might

[00:25:29] already be using, uh, interesting, uh, I’d love to hear more about it.

[00:25:33] You can join the developer T discord community, head over to developer t.com slash

[00:25:37] discord to join today.

[00:25:39] That’s totally free.

[00:25:40] It will always be free.

[00:25:41] Uh, and when I also think today’s sponsor unblocked, uh, your developers know how to

[00:25:46] write code already.

[00:25:47] That’s why you hired them in the first place.

[00:25:49] That’s not what they need help with instead, but they’re missing is the context to know

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[00:26:08] Thanks so much for listening to this episode of developer T and until next time,

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