Updated Sep. 22, 2019. Originally posted Dec. 26, 2012.

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To-do lists, or task lists, are the “other half” that complements the calendar and appointment tracking, to form the foundation of your personal organization system.  We start here because (almost) everything else will build on these.

Where to Keep Your To-Do List(s)

The to-do list, or task list, is usually very closely related to the calendar, and it’s generally best to keep them together; they work in tandem.  So when you’re setting these things up, be sure to consider similar questions to those you considered when choosing a calendar setup – like how portable you need it to be.

Methods to the Madness

There are several different ways to think about task lists.

Traditional – Daily & Long-Term

Perhaps the most traditional method is to have two lists: a daily to-do list (things you’re planning to do today) and a long-term to-do list (things that have to get done at some point, but which aren’t assigned to a day yet).  This worked well for me for a long time, but I learned some things from reading Getting Things Done that revolutionized my thinking, and the GTD method works even better for me than the “old” way.  (More on that in a minute.)

Master Your (Workday) Now (MYN) Method

The method described by Michael Linenberger in his books, Master Your Workday Now and The One-Minute To-Do List [get it free in PDF], is essentially an expansion of that traditional method.  It employs three “urgency zones”: “Critical Now,” “Opportunity Now,” and “Over the Horizon.” This basically boils down to “has to be done today,” “do soon,” and “do eventually.”  These are reviewed hourly, daily, and weekly, respectively.

If you have a lot of email-related tasks and work with Outlook or something similar, you might want to check out his books, because one thing he’s really strong at is integrating email and action.  But you can use the concept of the three zones, regardless of your method.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) Method

I alluded to the GTD method, but what is it?  Well, there are three major factors that set it apart.

1) There are no daily to-do lists.  It has been my experience that half the stuff gets rolled over to another day, anyway.  If it doesn’t have to be done today, it doesn’t belong on today.  This allows for greater flexibility, and avoids frustration (as well as the tendency to ignore the list because you know it doesn’t really need to be done right now).  (I do actually sometimes put one or two things on my day’s page if they really need to be done now.  But then I’m less likely to overlook them because they’re not lost in a sea of “could-waits.” Note that this is similar to Linenberger’s distinction between “critical now” and “opportunity now.”)

2) Task lists are lists of “next actions.”  This is a subtle distinction, but it’s huge.  “Next action lists” do not include projects, and they do not include things you can’t do yet.

How many times do you have, say, “Call plumber” on your to-do list, and find yourself putting it off for three months?  Chances are very good that you’re putting it off because “call plumber” isn’t really the very next action you need to take.  Subconsciously, you realize this, but you don’t want to put forth the mental effort to figure out what is, in the moment, so you procrastinate.  It’s more likely that the next action is something like, “Look up the number for the plumber.” I know it sounds petty, but it really makes a huge difference in how long things “hang out” on my lists!

3) Task lists are divided into contexts.  This allows you to be more efficient, by grouping like tasks (all of your phone calls, for example) together, and to see at a glance what you’re able to do right now, without having to read over every potential task that you can’t do at the moment.  The trick is to have as many as you need to be practical, but no more than you need.

As a stay-at-home mom, many of my tasks are household tasks and could technically be done at any time, so I’ve found it helpful to create “contexts” for each day of my weekly rotation.  So I can ignore a kitchen task (we’re talking biggies or occasional tasks, not everyday things like washing the dishes) six days of the week and not keep having to look at it, but on Kitchen Day, I have all of my kitchen tasks there in one spot.  I also have some more traditional contexts, which are things like “computer” (tasks that can’t be accomplished while you’re away from the computer, so you might as well not keep re-reading them at that time).

Extras

It’s really only necessary to write down the task that needs to be accomplished (and cross it off, check it off, or whatever when you finish it).  But some people might find it helpful to make small notations near each one.

Some people find noting the priority of the task helpful.  I don’t, because I find that this is constantly in flux.  But if you do, by all means, incorporate this!  You might find it useful to jot down a deadline, or…

Others like to make note of how long the task should take.  Again, this is not something I do, primarily because I have a terrible sense of time, so my estimates are never right.

When I have a phone call to make, it’s helpful for me to have the telephone number already written beside it, so I don’t have to dig it out again.

Is there something else you find helpful?  Let us know in the comments!

My Lists

I’ve done a lot of rearranging over the years, and my systems are always flowing and changing with the seasons of life.  At the time this post was originally written, my contexts were:

• Anywhere/General/Household (This was not a very helpful context for me.)
• Laundry [Day]/Sewing
• Kitchen [Day]
• Cleaning [Day]
• Paperwork/Office
• Computer (offline)
• Online
• Phone Calls
• Errands/Out
• $$$ (This isn’t exactly a to-do list, but it’s a list of stuff to buy.  These things kept popping up on my older-style “to-do” list.)
• Family (stuff I need to wait to do with a particular family member and/or talk to a family member about)

Your contexts will likely be a bit different, but will probably have some overlap with mine.

For a long time I had lists (which I kept copying and recopying), so when I moved to the sketchbook-based planner, I will had a page for each context, where I could put each task on a separate 1.5″x2″ sticky note and stick it to the page.  If it became a super-high priority, I could grab it and stick it to the current day’s page.  (Post-Its on the daily pages are the way I was already handling high-priority items like this.)  When finished, I could stack the note in the “done” space in the corner of the daily page and have a record of what I did that day.

The idea was that this allowed list items to be flexible and movable.  If I decided one was in the wrong context, I could move it.  If I decided something moves from Current to Someday/Maybe or vice versa, I could move it rather than cross it out and rewrite it.  And when I coming up with random ideas, I wouldn’t have to copy them over to the task lists when I sat down to sort them out. Instead, I could just stick tasks to the task lists, Someday/Maybe ideas to that page, etc.

This sounded pretty good in theory, but it didn’t really work very well in practice.  It might still work well for someone, but I think I was just too ingrained with my lists, so even though the flexibility sounded nice, I didn’t really use it.

Please feel free to share your system in the comments, so we can learn from each other!

If you’re just stumbling across this, please click here for the other posts in the series.