great milenko, wave your wand

So let’s say you’re in the same boat I am (this is a running theme, have you noticed?) and you’ve just got, like, SO MUCH STUFF that HAS to get done YESTERDAY or you will DIE (or fail/get fired/mope). Everything needs to be done yesterday, you’re sick, and for whatever reason you are focusing on the least important stuff first. What to do!

Take a deep breath, because this is a boot camp in prioritization.

Make a 3 by 4 grid. Make it pretty big. The line above your top row goes like this: Due YESTERDAY - due TOMORROW - due LATER. Along the side, write: Takes 5 min - Takes 30 min - Takes hours - Takes DAYS.

Divide ALL your tasks into one of these squares, based on how much work you still have to do. A thank you note for a present you received two weeks ago? That takes 5 minutes and was due YESTERDAY. Put it in that square. A five page paper that’s due tomorrow? That takes an hour/hours, place it appropriately. Tomorrow’s speech you just need to rehearse? Half an hour, due TOMORROW. Do the same for ALL of your tasks

Your priority goes like this:

5 minutes due YESTERDAY

5 minutes due TOMORROW

Half-hour due YESTERDAY

Half-hour due TOMORROW

Hours due YESTERDAY

Hours due TOMORROW

5 minutes due LATER

Half-hour due LATER

Hours due LATER

DAYS due YESTERDAY

DAYS due TOMORROW

DAYS due LATER

At this point you just go down the list in each section. If something feels especially urgent, for whatever reason - a certain professor is hounding you, you’re especially worried about that speech, whatever - you can bump that up to the top of the entire list. However, going through the list like this is what I find most efficient.

Some people do like to save the 5 minute tasks for kind of a break between longer-running tasks. If that’s what you want to try, go for it! You’re the one studying here.

So that’s how to prioritize. Now, how to actually do shit? That’s where the 20/10 method comes in. It’s simple: do stuff like a stuff-doing FIEND for 20 minutes, then take a ten minute break and do whatever you want. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s how I’ve gotten through my to do list, concussed and everything.

The numbers aren’t in a super logical/elegant order because I tried it out for a couple days and moved the numbers around until they matched my actual priorities. (It’s not 100% perfect of course, but that’s fine because it’s just supposed to give me a recommendation so I can skip past the task paralysis! If I want to go out of order I can do that.)

Then I built myself a whole excel workbook with formulas to do all of the thinking and sorting for me, and then of course I went down a whole big rabbit hole of extra features and automatic sorting and it was at this point that I thought I should share it with more people so the ridiculous amount of time I spent on it would be a little more justified

So here’s a link to a google drive folder if anyone wants to try this out! The basics work okay in google sheets but some features only really work in excel.

There are 2 excel files in the folder, one based on the original 12-level priority chart and one for the 16-level chart that I’m using. Each one has three sheets: “Task List” is the screenshot above with all the bells and whistles, “Simple Task List” hides some of the unnecessary columns so that it’s less overwhelming, and “Priority” is where you can define your different priority levels. You can edit any of the numbers in that sheet to whatever works for you, all of the formulas should still work!

If you have any questions about how to edit this to work best for you, or you accidentally broke a formula or something, feel free to DM me :) I hope this is helpful for some people!! It’s been really helpful for me.

Image 1. 3 by 5 grid template version for the Task categorization, described by OP. Rows: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Columns: 5 minutes, 30 minutes, Hours, Days.

Image 2. A different 4 by 4 grid template with more task categorization. Rows: Overdue, Today/Tomorrow, 5 work days, Later. Columns: Within 15 minutes, 45 minutes, 90 minutes, Longer.

Image 3. Screenshot of a decorated Google Sheet, for task categorization and priority - inspired by the post.

Sure, let's do it.

Send me kinks and I will rate them on this five-point chart.

Simplicity - how many additional conditions/requirements need to be attached for this kink to reach its full potential. A high number means this is inherently hot no matter what you do with it, while a low number means it can be nice, but it might need so many strings attached or such a specific setup that it's not worth it

Eros - how hot it is on a raw, physical level

Agape - how hot it is on a brain-tickling level

Narrative possibility - how much can it be played with, or used to kick off (or be the result of) interesting stories. A low number means "this can only ever really be used in one-off caption porn, and trying to expand on it wouldn't yield anything"

favorite horror movies (109): perfect blue (1997)

some of affirmations being used:

when i smoke weed, all the police officers take a nap in their cars because they’re tired

every time i light my joint, all the murderers in the world can’t hold their weapons because their hands are too sweaty

i know my mom says normal, even nice, things about me to strangers.

hi everybody. were you into file sharing in the early 00s? do these file names look familiar to you? this is a workprint/screener for house of 1000 corpses that was SUPER popular back then.

so why am i posting about this??

because this is the lost cut of the movie with all the deleted scenes.