Let’s talk about todo lists. You know, those messy notes that live on some paper, your email inbox, a couple of note files, and mostly your brain, listing all the things you need to do.
I know that’s what I did. In fact, that’s still what I sometimes end up doing.
I found a better way though.
Start Simple: The Basic Todo List Done Right
Let’s begin by fixing your todo list as it is.
First, your todo list should live in a single place. You can choose whether you want it to be on paper, in your notebook, or digital.
Here’s what you do.
First write down all the tasks you need to work on. Large and small, as they come to mind. You will have a
Then take tasks and split them into smaller tasks. Make them all as small as you can. An item I can complete in 15 to 30 minutes at most is ideal for me.
Now go through your list and prioritise it. You should actually mark the priority on the list, before sorting. I do numbers (1 to 5), some people do letters (say A to F). That way, you can see if there’s too many “top priority” tasks.
When you prioritise, consider that important stuff might not be super urgent, but might deserve a higher spot.
Your list will now look something like this:
- 1 Close financial report
- 3 Review weekend plan
- 2 Car oil change
- 2 Requirements document for project X
- 4 Fill expense reports
- 3 Buy running shoes
- 5 Renew magazine subscription
- 2 Hire new assistant
...
If you have loads of tasks, as it happens, make a different list now. That’s your “daily” (or “weekly”, or whatever size you prefer) list. On it, copy the top high priority items you have, in order. Don’t overload that list.
And that’s pretty much it. Next, you trust the planning, and go do those tasks in order of priority. When each task is done, delete it or strike it through.
At the end of the day, or tomorrow first thing, or whenever you decide to do some planning, add any new task and reprioritize. You should reprioritize all the tasks, not just the new ones, because the world changes all the time.
Easy peasy. This works well for a basic, but potentially large, list of tasks that you have to do.
When Simple Isn’t Enough: Industrial Strength Lists
Basic todo lists are cool, but often don’t make the cut.
They are, well, too simple and can become inadequate easily. Deadlines, imposed requirements, blocking interdependences, vast scope differences (say, “reply to Bob” and “organize team offsite” hanging out together), and a lot of other complexity will get in the way. Life is a messy place.
Here’s a way to fix that. I learned this from a really great technical program manager I worked with, and added some tweaks.
Let’s go.
Step 1: Collect All The Things
The first step, just like with todo lists, is to collect all your items.
You should do a brain dump: literally anything relevant goes. Write it down instead of keeping in in your mind. Move stuff you’re keeping in your inbox, on little paper scraps, on some note app on your phone. You can either put all things specific to a context (say, “all work items”, or “all personal items”, or “all my personal goals”) in a separate list, or throw everything together. I tend to oscillate between the two.
Dump everything out of your head and onto paper (or a text file, in my case)
Step 2: Delete All The Crap
If you actually wrote everything on your mind down, more than half of the items are probably crap.
We all have half thought ideas and things we might want to do one day, “nice to haves”, and just plain excuses. Scan your list and delete any crap you can find. If you don’t know if you’ll ever do it, just delete it. If it’s not something you think is actually necessary but “might be nice if you get to it”, kill it mercilessly.
Life’s too short to hold on to useless tasks.
Step 3: Make Projects and Tasks
Here’s the secret: there are only three types of todos: tasks, projects, and processes.
- A task is a thing you can do in one go. It’s the base block of your list. If it is completely clear and will take no more than one hour and a single activity to do, that’s a task.
- A project has two properties: 1) It is more than one task, and 2) It can be completed and be done. That’s. It. Fill a form and post it to the bank? That’s a project. Organize your wedding? Also a project. At least two tasks, and finished at some point.
- A process is a recurring item. Having team meeting is a process. So is brushing your teeth. Think like, a project, but can’t ever be done. You don’t manage processes here.
Next step is to go through your list and organize it based on this.
Each item should end up in one of three states:
- It’s actually a project. In this case, promote it to a section title on your list, and list actual tasks for the project. Here’s an important thing: you might not know (in fact you almost certainly won’t) all the tasks needed to complete the project. That’s ok. Write down all the things you already know you’ll have to do, and all the tasks you’ll need to perform to find out what else needs to happen.
- It’s a task that belongs to a project, or clusters with other tasks to form a project. Great! Make the appropriate project and move all the relevant tasks under it. This will happen more than you think: humans are great at clustering and finding sense and structure in things. Go with it, but keep it sensible.
- It’s a ‘free’ task: just a single thing to be done, no project. This is the type of stuff that swims randomly between your ears until you capture it. If once a task is complete there’s nothing else to do to “be done”, then it’s not a project by our definition. Couple of options: either treat them as “degenerate” projects of one task, or (what I do) have a catch-all section in your list, at the same level of projects. I call it the “Random Bag of Tasks”.
- It’s a recurring task you need to do on a cadence. I don’t keep recurring tasks on my todo list but on my calendar. That’s a story for another day.
Step 4: Prioritise
Time to put some order in your list. Literally.
You have this nice list of projects and their tasks. What you need to do now is prioritize it. Here’s the deal: you prioritize the projects, not the tasks.
So, use a number or a letter to mark each project (1 to 5, or A to F or whatever works for you), and then sort the projects by priority.
There. Now you have a nice and well organized super-todo-list of projects and their tasks. Doesn’t it feel better already?
Daily Execution: The Today List
You should have at this point a list of tasks (that’s things that can be done in one go, in less than 30 miutes), grouped in projects (that’s clusters of tasks that produce a well defined outcome, and have a completion state). So what are you going to do with that?
The Today List
Your today list is the sub-view of your project list with all and only the stuff you need to worry about today.
Note that while I call it the “Today List”, it could easily be a “This Week” or “This Morning” list.
How do you make your Today List, you ask?
1. Select First, go through all the projects, in order, and pick the top tasks from them. You’ll need some high judgement here to decide between how many concurrent projects you’ll work on today, vs. how many tasks of a single project you should do.
Select a sensible number of tasks, so that you’re somewhat confident about finishing most of them.
Write the selected tasks on a new file or a new piece of paper.
If you select a task that takes no more than two minutes, just do it instead of writing it all over, and cross it out (or delete it or however you choose to deal with your completed tasks).
2. Manage delegation You might have stuff you’re waiting for, or need to tell other people to complete.
- For any task you need to delegate, add a new task on your today list that is “delegate other task to Michelle”.
- For any task that was delegated to someone and had a due date to today, add a new task on your today list that says “check with Anthony about completion of other task”.
3. Clean up Go through all the projects and their tasks on your project list.
If you see something that seemed a good idea at the time, but clearly doesn’t need doing, delete it.
If you see a task that should belong to a different project, move it.
If you see an entry that is a task and should be a project, fix it.
You get the gist.
That’s it. Time to do some actual work!
Today and Project Lists Mechanics
Congratulations, you now have a focused, refined, mini todo list just for today.
You only have to prioritise it like you would a basic todo list, and start working through it.
There are some other mechanics you need to know to keep things smooth though.
Interrupts and escalations
Let’s face it, life is unpredictable. I guarantee that at some point something will come up that will completely disrupt your careful planning. When that happens, you have three options, depending on the urgency of the new, interrupting task:
- If it needs doing right now!, just go do it. You don’t really need to put in on the list: you already know what you’re doing right now.
- If it is a “could you get this to me by EOD” scenario, add it to your today list, near the top.
- If it’s just a new ask, put it in your Project List, either in the appropriate project or as a new item. You can avoid making the whole new-project-and-tasks bit, that’s for tomorrow morning. Don’t do too much about this future thing at the expense of the present.
Delegation
Delegation is great, and allows you to deliver so much more than you could on your own. However, when you delegate you’re still accountable for the task. So how to track delegation?
- Once you delegated a task, mark it on the Project List with the name of the recipient and the date by when you expect it done. Then mark your task to delegate the item in your Today List as done.
- Once the task has been successfully completed, mark it as completed on the Project List. Obviously, mark the task to check for completion on your Today List as done.
Close of Play
At the end of the day, go delete all your completed tasks from the Project List, add any new item that popped up and you didn’t actually already put there, reprioritize stuff as needed, and generally just leave it clean for fixing and planning tomorrow morning. I dislike figuring out tasks and projects and work after a whole day of work and prefer doing that in the morning, but you might instead want to do that. Feel free.
Putting It All Together
And that’s it! Start with the basic method if you’re new to structured todo lists. When life gets more complex and you need to manage multiple projects with interdependencies, upgrade to the industrial strength system.
The key is having a system that matches your complexity level and actually helps you get things done. Because the best todo list in the world is useless if you don’t trust it enough to follow it.
Do you have a different method? If you try this one, let me know how it works for you!