[nguyentphai]

I posted a comment there, but I thought I'd bring it here as well.

His title should be "To-do-lists-without-context-and-forced-prioritization don't work"? It's clear it's not living by the calendar that solves everything, it's the proper elimination of unnecessary tasks and doing the things that are important first. I think the best part is the one sentence that said "whether or not you can or should (say yes) to a project". That's the hard part. That's the part I think we all need to learn, and doing that first is a priority over changing how you manage your lists.

I've seen too many managers at big companies who live by the calendar. It's obvious. They always say, "let me check my calendar first". Is this how you should be managing your priority and time? Shouldn't your decision to do anything be on the importance and urgency of your tasks? (You can always delay the less important tasks).

I think this is a failure in most time management strategy. Anyways, I'm a developer of Priority Matrix (www.appfluence.com), which is about managing priority, rather than time, and I'm bias against the calendar as a pure way to manage anything. I think it's a hard problem to solve, and I do spend half by time writing lists, and half my time determining what's critical.

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.