Ranking Tasks Implicitly

I’m interested in systems that rank tasks implicitly; that is, without requiring people to define which one is “most important”, “next most important”, etc. These are the ways I’m currently thinking of:

* Urgency

* Is this task due soon?

* Location

* Are you in a good place to do it?

* Dependence

* Do other tasks depend on this one being done?

* Recurrence

* Is it scheduled to happen again soon? Does that mean it’s less important this time?

* Past Behavior (for recurring tasks or those you’ve postponed)

* Do you always do this task promptly or do you usually postpone it?

* This could go both ways: either you stop pushing postponed things on people or you push harder until they actually do it

* [Clippy annoyed people](http://xenon.stanford.edu/~lswartz/paperclip/) by pushing too much

* It often takes a push to get you doing something new and scary. [Nanny 911](http://www.fox.com/nanny911/) specializes in motivational discomfort for those used to giving up.

* Community

* Are there other people doing this now that you could work with?

* [43things.com](http://43things.com) a good example

* Are there other people depending on you to do this?

See, this is why we need Google. It’s really hard to do this relevance stuff! Let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas for ranking tasks automatically.