Post 48: Prioritise Tasks by Rating not Sorting

Neel Nanda · 15 Jun 2022

Neel Nanda did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
In prioritizing a list of tasks, the closest calls matter least while getting the very top item right matters most

Their wordsIn hindsight, the hardest comparisons are in fact the least useful - if I do the fourth most important task before the third most important, that's no big deal, but doing the tenth before the first is a screw-up!
Our reading
Having any ordering to follow, even an arbitrary one, helps overcome indecision about where to start work

Their wordsThere's a surprising amount of value in having any order at all (even an arbitrary one like first-come-first-served!) to break past indecisiveness about where to start.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.