Comments on: If you have highlighted everything…

By: Dennis' Annuity Leads

Dennis' Annuity Leads — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:11:19 +0000

Mass-highlighting and excessive 'priority' items seem to me to be the classic case of confusing what important with what is urgent.

One of the worst examples of mis-managment I've experienced used to encourage this behavior - make everything urgent and we'll be more successful he seemed to be saying.

The main result of his approach was stress and employee turnover!

By: Dennis' Annuity Leads

Dennis' Annuity Leads — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:48:35 +0000

Mass-highlighting and excessive ‘priority’ items seem to me to be the classic case of confusing what important with what is urgent.

One of the worst examples of mis-managment I’ve experienced used to encourage this behavior – make everything urgent and we’ll be more successful he seemed to be saying.

The main result of his approach was stress and employee turnover!

By: Scrollin’ On Dubs » Blog Archive » Urgency vs. Importance and the 5th system for scattered todos

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:42:02 +0000

[...] I wrote a little while ago about this concept of “if you’ve highlighted everything…” and why it’s good to keep your main list of current assaults lean. I wanted to explain the concept of urgency vs. importance that I mentioned in that post and then propose a simple addition to the 4 mechanisms for managing scattered todo’s that I proposed. [...]

By: CWW

CWW — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:58:32 +0000

Sean, don’t you know that those people you saw mass-highlighting in college are now the fat cat execs in client meetings who look at a proof and say, “this is okay, but can we make the whole bottom paragraph bigger and in bold text? And instead of just our name being in red, why not make all the contact info in red too? We want to make sure people see it.” The inability to understand visual prioritizing, as you and the commentors have pointed out, is one that is prevalent in many different aspects of life. Nothin’ you can do but sit back and laugh, my friend.

By: noah kagan

noah kagan — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:29:12 +0000

Awesome point! I have been spending a LOT of time lately on effective copy and such…

By: Tim Peter

Tim Peter — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:05:54 +0000

Perfect, Sean. A good review of the literature recommends somewhere around 3-5 key priorities as the cutoff. I once worked in a place where folks often referred to “our top 15 priorities.” Needless to say, nothing got done. To restate your premise, when everything is a priority, nothing is.