• health: 0~10
• financial: 0~9
• relational: 0~8
• spiritual: 0~7
• recreational: 0~6

https://prioritylist.app/

#health: 0~10

Impact Level	Effort (Est. Time)	Key Question
10	~1 minute	Will delay cause irreversible parent failure?
9	~5 minutes	Will delay make recovery prohibitively difficult/costly?
8	~15 minutes	Will delay cause a significant slip in core resources?
7	~30 minutes	Does delay completely block other people from working?
6	~1 hour	Does delay create significant problems or rework for others?
5	~2-3 hours	Are the consequences of delay manageable and absorbable without derailing parent core progress? (parent doesn’t depend on it, but it adds value)
4	~4-6 hours	Does delay only cause minor inconvenience for you?
3	~1 day	Is the impact a trivial, easily-fixed annoyance for you alone?
2	~2-3 days	Would you barely notice if this was delayed for another month?
1	~4-6 days	Is this a “nice to have” with no real negative consequence?
0	~1+ weeks	Is this task irrelevant or obsolete?

#financial: 0~9

Impact Level	Key Question
9	Will delay cause irreversible parent failure?
8	Will delay make recovery prohibitively difficult/costly?
7	Will delay cause a significant slip in core resources?
6	Does delay completely block other people from working?
5	Does delay create significant problems or rework for others?
4	Are the consequences of delay manageable and absorbable without derailing parent core progress?
3	Does delay only cause minor inconvenience for you?
2	Is the impact a trivial, easily-fixed annoyance for you alone?
1	Would you barely notice if this was delayed for another month?
0	Is this task a “nice to have” with no real negative consequence or irrelevant/obsolete?

#relational: 0~8

Impact Level	Key Question
8	Will a delay cause irreversible failure of the parent project or goal?
7	Will a delay make recovery prohibitively difficult or costly?
6	Will a delay cause a significant slip in core resources (time, money, or scope)?
5	Does a delay completely block other people from working, creating a bottleneck?
4	Will a delay create significant problems or force rework for others?
3	Are the consequences of the delay manageable and absorbable without derailing the parent’s core progress?
2	Does a delay cause only a minor, easily remedied inconvenience for you?
1	Would you barely notice if this task’s completion were delayed by another month?
0	Is this task essentially a “nice to have” with no real negative consequence?

#spiritual: 0~7

Impact Level	Key Decision Question
7	Will a delay cause irreversible failure of the parent project or make recovery prohibitively difficult/costly? (Existential threat: no recovery possible.)
6	Will a delay cause a significant slip in core resources (time, money, or scope) that jeopardizes critical milestones? (Major setback requiring urgent attention.)
5	Will a delay completely block essential work by others or create a bottleneck in the workflow? (High harm: your delay halts progress for a team.)
4	Will a delay create significant problems or force rework for others, affecting project momentum? (Moderate harm causing inefficiencies or extra work.)
3	Are the consequences of a delay noticeable but manageable, impacting non-critical elements without derailing core progress? (Tolerable harm that adds “quality debt.”)
2	Does a delay result in minor inconveniences or easily resolved issues that affect only your personal workflow? (Low harm that is quickly fixable.)
1	Would a delay have barely any noticeable impact on the overall project, making it almost optional? (Negligible disruption.)
0	Is this task essentially a “nice-to-have” or obsolete, with no real negative consequence if delayed or removed? (Backlog noise – non-actionable.)

#recreational: 0~6

Impact Level	Key Question	Guiding Principle and Rationale
6	Will delay cause irreversible parent failure or make recovery prohibitively difficult/costly?	Catastrophic/Critical Harm: This level combines the highest stakes—existential threats where delay means the project dies (original L10) or enters a crisis so severe that recovery jeopardizes its future (original L9).
5	Will delay cause a significant slip in core resources (e.g., time, budget, scope)?	Substantial Harm: This is about major, measurable setbacks that require formal changes to the project plan. The delay consumes a significant portion of resources and guarantees a slip in delivery (original L8).
4	Does delay completely block other people from making progress?	Collaborative Gridlock: The principle here is that you have become a hard bottleneck. The cost of your delay is multiplied by the number of people who are fully stopped and waiting on you to proceed (original L7).
3	Does delay create significant problems or rework for others?	Team Friction: This is distinct from a full stop. Others can proceed, but with incomplete information that will cause inefficiency, frustration, and rework later. It erodes project velocity and morale (original L6).
2	Are the consequences of delay manageable, primarily impacting internal quality or standards without derailing core progress?	Tolerable Harm (Quality Debt): This task is important but not urgent for the parent goal’s immediate progress. Delaying it impacts professionalism and best practices (e.g., documentation, code refactoring), creating “debt” that must be paid later (original L5).
1	Does delay only cause a minor inconvenience or a trivial, easily-fixed annoyance for you alone?	Minor Harm (Personal Clutter): The negative impact is contained entirely to your personal workflow and mental load. It does not affect anyone else or the project’s bottom line. This covers overflowing inboxes or disorganized personal files (original L4 & L3).
0	Is this task a “nice-to-have,” something you’d barely notice if delayed, or is it potentially irrelevant or obsolete?	Negligible Harm (Backlog Noise): This level combines all tasks that should be aggressively challenged. The principle is to identify and remove vague ideas or outdated tasks to create focus. If you could delete it with no real consequence, it’s a Level 1 (original L2, L1, & L0).

How to Use This Framework

1. For Your Weekly Review: Start at the bottom and work your way up. First, ask: “Are there any cracks in my foundation (Health)?” Then, “Are my structural walls (Financial, Relational) secure?” Only after confirming the stability of the lower levels should you focus significant energy on the apex goals.
2. In Times of Crisis: The pyramid shows you what to protect first. In an acute crisis, all resources must be diverted to shoring up the lowest affected layer.
3. To Counteract Modern Pressures: Society often pressures us to invert the pyramid—to sacrifice Health for Financial success. This framework serves as a conscious corrective, reminding you that such a strategy is fundamentally unstable and leads to inevitable collapse.

The process involves two key steps: Triage and Strategy.

1. Triage (The Table Below): This is the objective assessment phase. For each task, you will assign two scores, removing emotion and focusing on measurable data.
   • Impact Level: Start at Level 10 and work down. The first “Key Question” you can answer with “Yes” determines the task’s impact score.
   • Effort Score: Estimate the time required and find the corresponding score on the scale. A crucial part of this is being realistic, not optimistic, about the time commitment.
2. Strategy (The Guide Following the Table): This is the decision-making phase. Once you have the Impact and Effort scores, use the “From Triage to Strategy” guide to decide how and when to allocate your most valuable resource: your focused time.

Level 10: Catastrophic Harm (Existential Threat)

• The Principle: Delay means the project or goal ceases to exist in its current form. There is no recovery.
• Think About: Legal statutes of limitation, final contract deadlines with no extension, critical safety failures that would end the business.
• Example: A software update has a bug that is actively corrupting all user data. The task to roll back the update is a Level 10 because any delay causes irreversible damage to customer trust and data integrity, from which the company may not recover.

Level 9: Critical Harm (Project Jeopardy)

• The Principle: Delay triggers a crisis. The project can theoretically be saved, but only with an extreme, costly, and disruptive effort that jeopardizes future plans.
• Think About: Losing a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, damage to your reputation that will take years to repair, financial penalties that cripple your budget for the next quarter.
• Example: Forgetting to book a flight for a critical, can’t-miss client presentation tomorrow. You can still get there by paying an exorbitant last-minute fare and pulling an all-nighter, but the financial cost and personal stress are immense, and you’ll perform poorly.

Level 8: Substantial Harm (Major Setback)

• The Principle: Delay causes a major Resource Drain (time, money, or scope) that requires formal explanation and adjustment of the project plan.
• Think About: Will this require you to formally report a budget overrun or a change in the delivery date to stakeholders? Does it consume a significant portion (e.g., >20%) of the project’s remaining resources?
• Example: Delaying a decision on a key software library forces an entire development team of five people to pause work for several days. This directly translates to thousands of dollars in wasted salary and a guaranteed slip in the product release date.

Level 7: High Harm (Collaborative Gridlock)

• The Principle: Your delay creates a full stop for someone else. You are a bottleneck, and the cost of your delay is now multiplied by the number of people waiting on you.
• Think About: Is there a person or team whose next action begins with “Wait for [Your Name] to finish…”? This is not about making their work harder; it’s about making it impossible for them to start.
• Example: You are responsible for providing the final sales numbers to the finance department so they can close the quarterly books. They cannot proceed with their reporting, investor calls, or financial planning until you are done.

Level 6: Moderate Harm (Team Friction)

• The Principle: Your delay creates inefficiency and frustration. It doesn’t stop others, but it makes their work harder, forces rework, or lowers their quality. This erodes morale and project velocity.
• Think About: Will someone have to redo their work later because they had to proceed with incomplete information from you? Are you handing off a “known issue” that will cause problems downstream?
• Example: You provide a “draft” version of a document for review, knowing it has errors. Your manager spends an hour reviewing it, but will have to spend another hour reviewing the corrected version later, doubling their effort and disrupting their schedule twice.

Level 5: Tolerable Harm (Quality Debt)

• The Principle: Delay primarily impacts internal quality, standards, and best practices. Accumulating these creates “quality debt” that will have to be paid down later, often at a higher cost.
• Think About: These are the “important, but not urgent” tasks that separate a professional operation from a chaotic one. Refactoring code, improving documentation, organizing files.
• Example: The project’s shared document folder is disorganized. It doesn’t stop daily work, but it makes finding information slightly slower for everyone, every time they look. Delaying the cleanup is tolerable today, but over a year, it costs hundreds of hours of wasted team productivity.

Levels 4-3: Minor Harm (Personal Clutter)

• The Principle: The negative impact is contained entirely to you and your personal workflow. These tasks are often a source of “productive procrastination.”
• Think About: These tasks add to your mental load and create a feeling of being busy without generating real impact. They do not affect anyone else or the project’s bottom line.
• Example: (L4) Your email inbox is overflowing, causing you minor stress. (L3) Your desktop has a few extra files that need to be sorted into the correct folders.

Levels 2-0: Negligible Harm (Backlog Noise)

• The Principle: These items are not real, actionable tasks and should be aggressively challenged and removed to create clarity. A bloated backlog is the enemy of focus.
• Think About: Does this item represent a vague idea, an optional exploration, or an outdated concept? If you deleted it right now, would anyone notice in a month?
• Example: (L2) A task to “Explore new note-taking apps” when your current system works. (L1) A vague idea to “Learn more about marketing.” (L0) A task to “Prepare for Q2 meeting” when it’s now Q4.

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