Task priority | Voters

Task priority

in progress

Ashutosh Priyadarshy

Add the ability to set a priority level on a task card

December 16, 2019

Travis Meyer

Pinned

Task priority is now available in public beta. You can enable it from here: https://app.sunsama.com/settings/account#beta. Be sure to enable both 'Task Priority', and 'Auto-sort tasks' for the full experience.

Highlights:

Set priority (urgent/priority/normal/low) day-by-day
Set priority (urgent/high/medium/low/none) in your backlog
Auto-sort tasks when creating and updating based on priority, so high priority tasks stay at the top of your list

Missing from beta (but coming soon):

Mobile support
Integration support (e.g. matching the priority in Sunsama with the priority from the source tool)

Deeper dive:

In order to do task priority right, we felt there were three key things to support:

Setting your daily intention for what your top priorities for the day are (and what's more of a stretch / doesn't really need to get done today)
Protecting these priorities (i.e. keeping them at the top of your list) when adding new tasks, or adjusting your schedule
Setting a persisted priority for tasks in your backlog so you get a more granular sense of which are worth your time when picking out things to work on

This meant creating distinct priority levels for organizing your day vs. your backlog.

It also meant that by default, daily priority levels 'reset' when a task rolls over. Priorities often change day-by-day. Priority reset ensures that you stay intentional about what your priorities for the day ought to be. If this feels like too much overhead though, you can disable the decay.

Backlog priority is more stable, so these persist over time.

In order to protect your daily priorities, the new auto-sort mechanic attempts to keep priorities at the top of your list, while still allowing flexibility.

There's too much nuance to explain all of the inner logic of the auto-sort behavior, but the basic principles are:

when creating a new task for a particular day, or updating an existing task on that day in a way that likely affects the order it should be worked on...
try to position the task based on its priority (higher priority towards the top, low at the bottom)
honor existing scheduling constraints
honor the preference for whether new tasks should be added above or below existing tasks
try not to mess with the position of other tasks, unless they are out of order chronologically

Feedback:

Please let us know if anything feels off.

Karsten Jennissen

Thanks for implementing this! I would love to be able to filter according to priority, similar to filtering for channels / contexts.

Jake Lile

This is working great so far! LOVE the new update!!!

Brad Hawkins

@Travis Meyer
Thanks for the new feature. This is a great start.
I have similar feedback to others. I would like to see the ability to either map out Priority Levels or at least have None, Low, Medium, High, Urgent.
I realise that there can't necessarily be a one size fits all, but a few more levels of Priority helps one to sort out a list of tasks and create an order for execution.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks.

Andrew Jeter

Thankful for this!! Noticing that the "none" status is showing up on my day priorities instead of "normal"

Travis Meyer

Andrew Jeter: good suggestion. The 'no priority' option for daily tasks now is called "Normal".

Melodie Moore

Amazing! Excited to test this.

Stacey McDonald

Travis Meyer This looks great so far, thanks!
One initial feedback - I tend to prioritise using "Urgent, Now, Next, Later" rather than "High, Medium, Low"
It could be useful if you allow people to rename the priorities to suit their approach.

Beth Rea

Stacey McDonald Agree! I have the same feedback – would like to be able to rename / map the existing options to my naming convention.

Ryan Levander

Can't wait to try this out in Beta!

Travis Meyer

Highlights:

Set priority (urgent/priority/normal/low) day-by-day
Set priority (urgent/high/medium/low/none) in your backlog
Auto-sort tasks when creating and updating based on priority, so high priority tasks stay at the top of your list

Missing from beta (but coming soon):

Mobile support
Integration support (e.g. matching the priority in Sunsama with the priority from the source tool)

Deeper dive:

In order to do task priority right, we felt there were three key things to support:

Setting your daily intention for what your top priorities for the day are (and what's more of a stretch / doesn't really need to get done today)
Protecting these priorities (i.e. keeping them at the top of your list) when adding new tasks, or adjusting your schedule
Setting a persisted priority for tasks in your backlog so you get a more granular sense of which are worth your time when picking out things to work on

This meant creating distinct priority levels for organizing your day vs. your backlog.

Backlog priority is more stable, so these persist over time.

In order to protect your daily priorities, the new auto-sort mechanic attempts to keep priorities at the top of your list, while still allowing flexibility.

There's too much nuance to explain all of the inner logic of the auto-sort behavior, but the basic principles are:

when creating a new task for a particular day, or updating an existing task on that day in a way that likely affects the order it should be worked on...
try to position the task based on its priority (higher priority towards the top, low at the bottom)
honor existing scheduling constraints
honor the preference for whether new tasks should be added above or below existing tasks
try not to mess with the position of other tasks, unless they are out of order chronologically

Feedback:

Please let us know if anything feels off.

Jacqueline Themel

Travis Meyer this is awesome!!! Thanks a ton! :D

Blue Sama

Nice, finally!!

Brad Hawkins

It's great to see that this is now in progress. I think it is a vital part of any productivity system. Thanks Sunsama!!!
Do we actually know what this will look like when done/launched?
The reason I ask is that when done, will Sunsama "track" the priority of the underlying instrument? In other words, will Sunsama follow/use the priority set in the likes of Linear or Todoist? I would like to think that it would run with this approach and then allow one to change the priority in either platform (Sunsama OR the underlying instrument) with two way synching.
The main reason I point this out is that when a task is created (for me, Linear (mainly for business) or Todoist (mainly for personal and basic tasks)), is that to somewhat "order" the tasks, I set priorities.
At the moment, and to the best of my knowledge, when a task is created in Linear or Todoist, I cannot list them via priority. From what I can see, tasks in Todoist are able to be listed under various "Projects" or "Sections" and, in Linear they can only be displayed via the Creation Date.
Anyway, I am very much looking forward to the change as I think this will improve Sunsama immensely.

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