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Supermemo offers a surprisingly smart way to do task management. You organize tasks in Supermemo using a tasklist, which is basically like any other to-do list. But there's an important difference! Most to-do lists let you assign a priority to a task--maybe a number between 1 and 10. Then tasks are sorted by priority. Supermemo doesn't do that.
The problem with simply picking a priority is that it's highly inaccurate. You are likely to give a high priority to an unimportant task; because you feel guilty, or because you've been putting it off, or for some such reason. Simply picking a number between 1 and 10 is rather pointless.
Instead, here's what Supermemo does. First it asks you for the ``cost'' of the task. That might be an actual dollar cost. Or you might estimate the cost by thinking how long the task will take, and then assigning a dollar value to your time. (For example, 45 minutes at $.50 per minute would cost you $22.50.) After you enter the cost of the task, you are asked to enter the ``value'' of the task. The value might be an actual dollar value. Or you might choose a value by asking yourself, ``How much would I pay somebody else to do this for me?''
Notice that ``cost'' and ``value'' are two distinct concepts. Cost is what you give; value is what you get. If it costs very little, and you get tremendous value, then that task should have a very high priority. If the benefit is lower than the cost, you might not bother to do the item at all.
I usually enter the ``cost'' as minutes, and the ``value'' as dollars. The the value divided by the cost is in dollars per minute. You can think about it this way: if a task is worth $10 per minute to you, shouldn't you get on it right away? On the other hand, if it's worth a penny a minute, maybe you can forget about it--or pay somebody in pennies to go do it for you.
This is a fabulous system. Unfortunately, tasklists are part of Supermemo for Windows; the Linux version doesn't have task lists. But don't lose heart! If you're a palm user, you can experience the power of task lists for yourself: I've created a HanDBase database which functions just like Supermemo task lists. You can download it from HanDBase for free (but HanDBase itself is not free).
