This morning Richard tweeted "Four things to write this weekend... is it wrong to do them in the order of how much they pay?". This got me thinking about my own task juggling over the years. When I was in college I learned that there are times that you have more to do than can humanly be done. This was in fact a central part of the pressure West Point put on us while we were cadets there. To cope I came to the conclusion that the juggling metaphor is quite apt. The thing to realize is that not all balls (tasks) are created equal. Some are made of rubber and some are made of glass. Rubber balls bounce and you recover even if you let them drop from time to time. Glass balls shatter if you drop them even once. The key is to identify which kind of ball a task represents and there lies the rub.

We see the same decision points when we undertake software development. I try to tell people over and over that security is a task of glass.

For the record, I think Richard has his priorities correct all things being equal...