To Do List

A To Do list is a basic tool to be more productive and an important part of any system for task management. Some people like to keep an electonic list or use a to-do app, while others prefer a written list. Whatever you choose, creating an effective To Do list is a part of daily planning that will help you combat procrastination and get motivated to get the important stuff done.

Has your To Do list gotten out of control? When you list everything you need to remember and get done, the result can be overwhelmingly long.

The To-do Today list is best kept simple.

Super Simple ways to pick priorities:

• Oliver Burkeman advocates planning each workday around a 3-3-3 model, with three hours for deep work, three urgent tasks, and three maintenance tasks.
• The 1 – 3 – 5 Rule suggests choosing one large task, three medium tasks, and five small tasks.
• The Most Important Tasks (MITs) method from Leo Babuata of Zen Habits. After reviewing your calendar, choose only a few MITs, three things that MUST be done today.

Important tasks can be routine things, like a report that is due today. Sometimes there are unpleasant frogs or DAM CRAP that must be dealt with. But don’t let the less urgent Very Important Pursuits that are Active, Inspiring, and Meaningful Solutions get lost in all the distractions that compete for attention.

With your to do list at hand, begin the day by focusing first on the top priority task. Once that is completed, move on to the next. If time is available, add more tasks from your weekly plan, repeating tasks, work goals, and action steps for goals and projects.

When you keep your To-do Today list simple, you need somewhere else to keep all the OTHER stuff you need to do. That’s why we need more than one to-do list for The Daily PlanIt Keep It Super Simple (K.I.S.S.) System. Decide how you will capture these items in other lists. These may be kept in a To-do app, or a list in Google Drive or Evernote. I have come to really appreciate the abilities of Google Keep for lists and reminders. Or if you prefer paper, you may want to keep them in a planner or notebook.

Beyond the To-Do Today List Options:

• You can set up a To-do Next list, or lists for To-Do Later, To-do This Week, etc.
• You can use a master list.
• You can use lists from Getting Things Done  (GTD):  next actions, projects, waiting for, and someday/maybe. (I prefer different terminology)

Incoming Tasks

During the day, be prepared to capture tasks that arrive in various ways: via email, meetings, conversation, phone messages, etc. Recognize and add incoming tasks into your system, and delete the ones you accomplish.

De-clutter your To-do lists

Are your To-do lists cluttered with repeating tasks and daily routine activities? Few time management systems have a good way to deal with these. Here’s how to de-clutter your To-do lists.

Repeating (or recurring) tasks

We all have repeating tasks for home and work. For home, there are maintenance tasks that are necessary to keep life running smoothly and errands like getting gas or going to the bank. For work, there are often job duties that are done on a regular basis. You can keep a separate list of repeating tasks in a To-do app so they don’t have to be re-entered each time they need to be done. Just assign it to a date within your To Do list and it’s there. Once completed, simply send it back to the repeating task list. Even though I like having a list of repeating tasks, I don’t use the recurring feature in to-do apps, because some of these tasks are needed on an irregular basis. If it’s something I will likely forget without a reminder like changing the oil in the car that I want to remember in a few months, I schedule it in my calendar.

Daily routine activities

I don’t like the things I do as part of my regular daily routine to constantly show up in my tasks or calendar. I prefer to keep them as a separate list in Google Drive.

To-Do Apps: There are many options available for to-do apps. See Apps for Productivity and learn about the Daily PlanIt K.I.S.S. System. Google Tasks is a part of Google Calendar that has become a very useful tool.

For People Who Prefer Paper

Daily PlanIt free printable forms

• Daily Plan Form 8.5 x 11″ one-page (pdf)
• a free printable Daily Plan for a binder at Planner Printables
• a sticky note version daily planner (using a template from studenthandouts.com)
• a set of a weekly planning form plus five daily planning forms (pdf)

From Others: The To-do List from Samplewords is a neat pdf you can type your own information in. Find more at the Free Tools page and at the Productivity Tools Pinterest board.

You can manage your tasks with a To-Do Today List and other to-do lists you like. To-do lists are a big part of daily planning. The next step is to actually get them done! Learn more at the Daily PlanIt Time Management 101 Tutorial. You might also like Planning is Thinking, a Planner Checklist, a weekly review and a Weekly Plan.

Further Reading: Craig Jarrow, the timemanagementninja, calls it a TODAY list and shows 10 Things Wrong With Your To-Do List, Back to Basics: How to Simplify Your To-Do List and Make it Useful Again from Lifehacker,  No More Bloated To-Do Lists! at Instigator Blog, Inc Article The Surprising Secret to Time Management,  Do Your Most Important Task First? at 99u & List of Ways to Ruin a List at Brazen Careerist. Watch Creating a To-Do List that Really Works video from Michael Linenberger. See also Time Management at Wikipedia

About dailyplanit

I seek to create order from the chaos of complex information. Join me at the Daily PlanIt to gain insights, inspiration, and information to increase skills for a better life. I unlock the power of teaching reading with phonics in the pursuit of literacy at www.phonicspow.com. In my spare time I explore books and movies, often choosing titles available on both screen and page.