In the past few years, I have started categorising almost everything into smaller categories that help me focus on each category and handle it accordingly. Different people have different ways of categorising things and in my approach there are three categories: Necessity, Comfort and Luxury.

• Necessity: This category contains all the items are a must and cannot live without it.
• Comfort: This category contains all the items that are good to have, but are not a must to have.
• Luxury: This category contains all the items that would make it cool, but not necessarily add any value.

This categorisation can be applied to many aspects of things we do on a day to day basis. One way of using this is for Task Management.
Any to-do list item can be classified into the above three categories.

If it is something that you have to do now, it goes under Necessity.
(Example of an item in my to do list under the Necessity Category is – Get Emission Check completed before the end of the month).

If a task has to be done at some point of time, but there is no time sensitivity associated with it, it goes under Comfort.
(Example of an item in my to do list under the Comfort Category is – Learn Chinese language

If a task can be done some time, it would be good to do it, but does not necessarily add value, it goes under Luxury.
(Example of an item in my to do list under Luxury Category is – Swim 10 laps in 30 minutes).

Please note that these examples are purely from the point of view of the author and can fall under a different category for a different person.

For example: ‘Buying a car’, this might be a necessity for a common man in a developed country as it might be the primary mode of transport in the place that the person resides. This might be a comfort item for a common man in a developing country, while this might fall under a luxury item for a common man in an under developed country.

When this categorisation is used with the ‘Urgent – Important Matrix’, it becomes quite effective, as it helps us decide the role it plays in our long term goals. There are many other similar terminologies available, such as ‘Priority’, ‘Severity’, ‘Criticality’ etc.

If we use these categorisations consistently for task management over a period of time, it is bound to be quite effective – but discipline in maintaining it is the key. Try it out, if you can do it consistently.

I even gave a name to it called ‘NeCoLu’ and even registered a domain called necolu.com, as I thought it will be very useful to every one if I could build an online NeCoLu tracker for each individual. I have not proceeded with this idea as it is categorised right now under the ‘Luxury’ section of my To Do List 🙂