NUI tasks

Last Updated on March 6, 2023

I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about productivity over the years and written more generally about it here.
I think I’ve finally worked out a good approach to get on top of things and it’s a combination of a few different tools/systems.

What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

Here’s a long explanation from Todoist if you are not familiar.

What are NUI Tasks?

NUI stands for non urgent, important. You can pronounce NUI in NUI tasks as “new-ee”. NUI tasks are tasks that fall in the quadrant of not urgent, but important. I never spend enough time on those!

My process

Here are the key parts

  1. Identify the things you keep putting off because they are not urgent. Of these, identify which are important. These are your NUI tasks.
  2. At a regular interval, e.g. daily or weekly, choose some of these to work on. Ideally schedule them ahead and commit to them. (Every Tuesday I choose 2-5 of them and commit to having them finished by Saturday.)

Hat tip to all the systems that have influenced this:

Getting Things Done

Tiny Habits

OKRs

Commit Action