The "What's Important Today" Problem

In a typical day I have at least one person walk in my office and say something along the lines of "This feature is critical to our customers and we need to do something about it now." The problem is the same person will stop by the next day or next week with another really important problem. I'm almost always working on something or another and so can't just drop everything and start a new project. If I did nothing would get done.

So what to do about this? The problem is that we all have a tendency to make the issue that we ran into today a top priority. But then tomorrow, something else is a top priority. So it kind of becomes a time averaging problem. If you create a list priorities then re-prioritize, add to and remove items on it on a daily basis, then over time the highest priority items will float to the surface.

This works, as long as you aren't putting today's problem at the top of the list. So it makes sense to put today's problem in the middle of the list and then let it float. If it really is a high priority item then it will float to the top quickly.