[mistercow]

I had to reread it several times as well before I finally found a charitable interpretation. What he's saying is that with a to-do list, it's easy to just get all of the high priority stuff out of the way, and then when all you have is low priority stuff, just to dick around for the rest of the day.

On the one hand, there's some validity to that point; most people can't actually take care of every low priority item on a long term to-do list immediately without burning out. Balancing that with still taking care of the low priority items before they become crises can be difficult.

On the other hand, taking care of the A priorities and then ignoring the C priorities altogether is simply doing it wrong. The author suggests putting everything on a calendar instead of using to-do lists. I think this is dumb reasoning. There's nothing stopping you from using both.

Put everything on the to-do list. Get your high priority stuff out of the way, and then put the low priority stuff (or the stuff you have an ugh field around) on your calendar. This is way more efficient, and leverages the quickness of the to-do list to prevent you from accidentally forgetting something entirely.

[arjie]

I believe he's talking about some prevention is better than cure sort of thing. It's not important to get your car checked today because you have important things to do. However, if this happens every day, then one day your car is going to fail. Then, getting the car checked becomes a priority but if you'd fit it in earlier on, you could have gotten away with never having to deal with an emergency.

Essentially, he's talking about how we discount future risk when we prioritise tasks.