Saw this about scheduling productivity “dashes” on 43 Folders, and had this thought:

Say you’ve got 10 (30, 200?) items on your To-Do list, and you are so overwhelmed, you don’t know where to start.  What you need is a Random Task Generator, (alternative title “ToDo-per Scooper”).  Here’s how it would work:

1.  It would take the list of your to-do’s, either inputed directly or scoured (scooped?) from your Outlook tasks list, along with the estimated amount of time you think each task will take. 

2.  It would automatically add 50% more time to your estimate (to account for innacurate and overly-optimistic estimating).

3.  Whenever you set aside a certain amount of time on your calendar for non-specific task completion, it would fill in that time with a randomly-selected To-Do (or To-Do’s) that fit the time you set aside.

4.  The randomness could be changed to give more weight to more important tasks — kind of like adding more balls for the bad teams in the NBA lottery.

BONUS:  If this feature were incorporated into an enterprise-wide calendaring and task-management program (legal software vendors, are you listening?), the business could set aside an hour each day when everyone could get access to a fresh set of to-do’s to complete in that hour.  I think it could make the whole enterprise more productive.

Anyone want to build this application with me?  Or is it already out there?

technorati tags: productivity, procrastination, lifehacks, software, web2.0