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Add more priority levels

gmalone says:
The limitation of 1-3 for priority is pretty restrictive and doesn't provide the nuancing available in many other task organizers.

Could you please open up the priority numbers (and corresponding color codings) to at least 5? (i.e. 1-5)
Posted at 3:16pm on September 25, 2006
(closed account) says:
I think it's better that priority can be from -1 to 3 and 0 as default.
Because sometime I specify a task to lower priority than default.
Posted 13 years ago
cuhulin says:
I very much think 1-5 or 1-6 would be good. Keep the 0.
Posted 13 years ago
brigl says:
Why stop at 1-5. Why not have as many as you want (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, C1, C2 ...)
Posted 13 years ago
mamico says:
I only need on more call "on fire"
Posted 13 years ago
mde1959 says:
Yes please! I am surprised that such a great tool as RTM has only 1-3. Very restricting, and I can't see that this is a big issue to resolve...
Posted 13 years ago
cadetblue says:
Limiting priorities values to few units is highly uneffective. Priorities are a way to sort tasks competing for resources and to order them (competing for attention). I believe that that priorities should have any possible integer value: a 2-bytes value would be practical and useful
Posted 13 years ago
rdseabrook says:
I agree. I need to know what is my top priority NOW. Having more than one Priority 1 tasks doesn't help me to decide what to do next.
Posted 13 years ago
puckarocca says:
I'm a huge fan of ABC123(456....) A is your "On FIRE!" C is your "nice to get this done" and 123456789 helps you order them within those categories.

You could also set deadlines for each item when it should transition from being a "C" item to a "B" item to an "A" item.

That and an android tablet version would convert me off of paper tasking forever.
Posted 13 years ago
jeremycoster says:
More priority levels please! I used ListPro for an iPAQ (PocketPC), and that offered 1 through 9. Although -1, 0, 1, 2 ...9 would be even better.
Problem for the developer might be to do with how the original software was structured for the storage of priority data (2 bits?), so a change may be difficult to accommodate...
Posted 13 years ago
alsage13 says:
I would really like this. It's hard to create your own methods when you are limited to 3 priorities. I would really like more flexibility in this area.
Posted 13 years ago
crystal.odenkirk says:
I have taken to tagging all my items with a number that corresponds to their actual priority on a 1-10 scale. You can then use smart lists to create a list of each priority. Not as simple as having more priorities, but it works.

This could be something that you have an option in the settings to say how many priorities you want in your lists? Then the people who want 5 get 5, I get my ten, puckarocca could have 30... :D
Posted 13 years ago
jcrumley says:
I think there are multiple feature requests related to more priority granularity. Personally I am going through voting "yes" to all of them :). Some even have copied comments underneath. Since I am using an iPad I am not even going to attempt that and just vote!

It would ideal to have abc-numeric prioritizations or at least more tnumeric priority levels. Check out how many of your users have multiple high priority items - if it's lots then you need more granularity. I would even pay more for it :)
Posted 13 years ago
jmc127 says:
Definitely need more priorities.
Posted 12 years ago
nuteater says:
One option is to make the priority just an arbitrary number, or even a floating-point number. Then people could decide whether they want to use 0 to 3, -5 to 5, 1 to 10 or whatever. With floating-point priorities you have all the granularity you can ever desire. For example, if you have a long list of priority 3 tasks and a few of them are more important but not quite as urgent as priority 2, you can select them to stand out by giving them priority 3.5.

The only problem is to decide how to assign colors to the priorities. This could be a user setting -- choose the lowest priority and the highest priority and a color scheme (blue to yellow to red for example), and the tasks would be colored accordingly.

If this gets too big to implement, just having, for example, 5 priority levels instead of 3 would help a lot, thanks :)
Posted 12 years ago
2090170 says:
Sometimes I have a hard time prioritizing my tasks and I turn to the method of assigning and effort (e) and reward (r) per task. The ratio of e:r gives me a good way to set priorities w/o being biased. The lower the e:r ratio the more important the task or in other words: the higher the priority. With only 3 levels of priorities I have no way to sort a task that has an e:r of let's say 3:5 (on a 1 - 5 scale). Custom values for priorities would be very helpful.
Posted 12 years ago
diane.stephenson says:
I like being able to check the task and enter the number and use priority to group things. Would Love more than 1, 2, 3 - I bet it would be easy to take it to 5 or 10 - some of the other enhancements are nice but might be too difficult to get implimented - add the additional priorities and then work on that - LOL :)
Posted 12 years ago
gotardo says:
It would be a good feature in order to group tasks by color.
Posted 12 years ago
adrian.carvalho says:
I'd love to see this too!
Posted 11 years ago
jonathand131 says:
The priority could be 1-3 for "Free" users and have more priority levels for "Pro" users.

As I don't use the mobiles apps, I see no advantages to switch to Pro at the moment (except supporting RTM).
Posted 11 years ago
kimsails says:
I'd really like to see more priorities. There are work-arounds, but I'd much prefer to just have more options. just adding to the present, single digit system (like 1-9 plus none) would fit my needs. I'd also be good with other options such as those outlined above (A1, A2, B1, ) -- so long as I have more!
Posted 11 years ago
rozziecole says:
This has still not been addressed. Stumped on how to use the popular ABCDE scheme with RTM
Posted 8 years ago
fcastell says:
Strange how such an old important thing reamais open. Perhaps RTM could come here and explain why this is so difficult to implement!
Posted 8 years ago
christopher.wetzel says:
New user here, +1 to more priority levels, and would love to take it a step further and see an ABC123 priority system. Would definitely get me to upgrade to Pro if offered as Pro-only functionality.
Posted 8 years ago
fizzyice says:
Just one extra priority would be a big help!
Posted 8 years ago
(closed account) says:
Yes, more priority levels, please. I have to use tags for that and ignore the priorities mostly.
Posted 7 years ago
simon.peacock says:
Hi Bob T. Monkey,

Would you please consider adding custom priority levels? The 4 available now aren't quite enough for me to easily enact the system I use. I use priority levels as a shorthand for 'where & when I ought to get to something'... as opposed to using the dates like tomorrow, or 3 pm today, etc... and the location fields. I just find it easier to manage & sort my list by priority. I equate priority (in my brain) with 'when/where'. Having to manage Eisenhower matrix concepts like 'urgent' versus 'important' gets a bit tricky for me to wrap my brain around... and having to change the location isn't super easy for me to conceptualize and operationalize in my list-management habit. So while I will analyze my list items occasionally in terms of 'important' and 'urgent', I tend to list my items in a ranking order as follows:

1. here/now
2. here/soon
3. in transit/after leaving here
4. there/straightaway
5. there/later
6. wherever/tomorrow
7. wherever/coming days

So while I tried assigned dates to everything, it seems to be tricky for me to move things around according to the need for me to have things arrayed before me in terms of timing using the date feature, or postpone feature... And easier to use the hotkeys to change priority around.

I am hoping you could offer a flexible prioritization feature... perhaps I could choose the number of prioritizing levels (below, I mention 7), and also (as an added feature) be able to assign custom colours to them (typically, the most important one would be red).

Here's the system I would like:

#1, red - here/now
i.e. the very first things to get to, wherever I am at that point

#2, orange - here/soon
i.e. things to get to, after I've gotten to the most immediate items

#3, dark blue - in transit/after leaving here
i.e. things to do between leaving here and getting home, e.g. buying groceries, dropping something off, remembering to grab something from my car trunk in the parking lot, stopping to grab my mail, before going up to my apartment, etc...

#4, dark green - there/straightaway
i.e. the very first things to which I need to attend as soon as I arrive home (or wherever I am headed to after being here.) e.g. start laundry, put book I borrowed into a bag on the front doorknob so I remember to grab it in the morning, locate tickets to the play and put in my wallet, etc., meet friend for dinner and a movie

#5, light green - there/later
i.e. once I'm home for a while or whenever I go after being there for a while,- e.g. clean kitchen, find my running shoes, declutter kitchen drawers, vacuum car trunk, get clothes ready for work the next day

#6, purple - wherever/tomorrow
i.e. things I need for sure to do tomorrow... e.g. go to bank first thing in the morning, drop off watch for repair while walking past watch store before getting into work in the morning, follow up on phone call once the store opens at 10:00 am the next morning, pick up prescription at lunch time, go grocery shopping after work

#7, clear - wherever/coming days
i.e. items to keep handy for some time this week/wherever

Thanks for your consideration
Posted 7 years ago
mbrandonpace says:
Custom priority levels would be great!
Posted 6 years ago
giro says:
+1
Posted 5 years ago
accipiter says:
+1
Posted 4 years ago
leoocampo says:
I personally find 4 levels of priority EXTREMELY limiting. I initially tried using “Never” as a default and using LOW for instances where I wanted to explicitly designate a task was NOT a priority. That failed because of sorting and because of priorities being tied to the integers 1 through 4, with “None” being the lowest in importance. So... fail.

This would be easily solved by if I could at least change the DEFAULT priority on all new tasks like I can for default Due Date. If all my new tasks were automatically set to “low”, then I could just manually set tasks I thought were low priority to “None” (as in ‘this task is not a priority at all’). Instead, priority starts at the bottom level of importance and all I can do is deem things “important” by up to 3 levels, all manual actions of course.

I think most people would expect to see a 5 tier system with tasks defaulting in the middle (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2 = very low, low, medium, high, critical). I imagine some folks may even want more than this.

Posted 4 years ago
jeremyholton says:
Better priority settings is something I have wanted for years along with many others
Posted 3 years ago
nancy.harrison says:
Would love to see more priorities implemented. Shocked to see this has been an open request for so long, especially with prices rising. Let's go, Bob!
Posted 1 year ago
leofebey says:
I was using Todo.txt and apps that worked with it (like Sleek) where you could assign a priority with letter A-Z (26 levels!) but I really needed the ability to sync my tasks between devices without sync issues, so moved on from it. I think a solution that may work for now is sorting a particular list (eg Toady's tasks) by drag and drop, but still isn't as clear which task comes first.
Posted 5 weeks ago
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