Prioritizing Work
Most people who make software will have more than one thing they are working on at any time. The choice could be between different tasks on one project, tasks on different projects, and other work such as preparing presentations, responding to emails, and so on.
Some people like to capture all of these tasks in a big review system such as GTD (http://www.davidco.com/) so that, at any time, they can review the outstanding tasks in their current context and choose one to work on next. A much simpler approach I was taught by the human resources department at Sophos (http://www.sophos.com), who got it from President Eisenhower, was to draw four quadrants indicating the urgency and importance of tasks.
Figure 13.1: The Eisenhower Matrix
Now think about the tasks that are currently pending and put them into these quadrants. Anything in the top-right quadrant is both important and urgent, so probably needs to be done soon. Anything that's important but not urgent...
