Productivity Basics — Tasks Part 2

Time

As I defined earlier that the fundamental building blocks of productivity are actions and time. I covered how Tasks are built from actions and likewise, they are also built on the component of time. This includes both start time and duration. In addition to those fundamental aspects, they could be pluralised, as in actions.

So there may be multiple stages of start times and duration times. Although ideally, we’d want tasks to be broken down enough for them to be completed in one session this isn’t always the case.

There are always unknowns and even in the case of a task goal only being time-based we can have interruptions out of our control. Also even within our control, we’re not perfect and it’s about restarting and improving when things go wrong. In order for a task to be completed whatever the stated outcome it will require finite time, even if it’s not clearly determined upfront.

Requirements

Another aspect of tasks as a property is it will have requirements in order to complete the task. A requirement is something that is essential for the task to be done or started. It may be the critical requirement could be from a range of options but is still needed.

Taking an example from the previous essay of “work out at the gym”, we ended up breaking down other tasks such as having gym clothes ready, and this dependency is a requirement. As is having a gym to go to. In order to work out at a gym, you need to have a membership of one. It isn’t critical to a specific gym only have one, and as a repeating task that would be identical, the requirement doesn’t have to be identical. You may find a better gym based on location and cost.

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