To Do a To Do or not To Do a To Do, that is the question. Pretty sure Shakespeare said that.
I used to keep my “To Do” list in my head. I recall a student organization I was in during college where my professor Lisa and I agreed on a plan. She looked at me incredulously and said, “Aren’t you going to write it down?” Smugly, I grinned, tapped my head and said, “No need, its all up here.” She gave me a look that expressed something along the lines of, “Pretty sure you have nothing up there and I’ll plan on this never getting done.” She wasn’t wrong. Sometimes we need a good non-physical slap to wake us up. Simply put, if your To Do list is in your head, you’re doing it wrong.
At any given time, we may have dozens or even hundreds of To Dos. If they’re in your head, they’re taking up thinking space, probably stressing you out, keeping you up at night and making it hard to relax. Plus, they’re not prioritized so they all vie for your attention as if they were the most important. They pop up out of nowhere like an unwelcome relative at the most inopportune times.
In this post, I’ll share how to get your To List under control which is the first step in actually getting your To Dos done. Both of which will reduce your anxiety and stress levels and help you sleep better.
Start with a brain dump
Everyone has a To Do list. They take many forms; honey-do lists, post it notes, stars in a notebook, Outlook tasks, Google tasks, shared lists, reminders in a written or digital calendar. Which is best? Quite simply, whichever you will use.
Whether you know it or not, there are highly effective ways to use a To Do list and numerous less effective ways. I’ll share a few of the tools I use in the hope of helping you get your To Dos organized, easily available and ready for doing!
Start by writing down all your To Dos in one place. This is a brain dump. Get them out of your head and onto paper. You need to see them all together to figure out how to organize AND prioritize them.
Remember to look at your list of Goals for the year and add To Dos to enable meeting your annual goals. For instance, if one of your goals is to learn to speak Spanish, your To Do might be to sign up for Duolingo. If you haven’t set your goals, this will help.
Here’s a subset from my list of To Dos:
Shampoo car seats
Build table for back yard
Sign up kids for summer camp
Build website
Prepare 2024 Taxes
Book 4 day weekend in April
Weather seal doors in house
Update Monthly report for January
Get drone for ribbon cutting
Wash Car
Modify Spotify account
Back up photos from January
Build fence in back yard
Create 3 year forecast
Do monthly personal balance sheet
Fix ceiling fan in G’s room
Create handmade sign for home address
Sell Mountain Bike dropper post lever
Put together emergency kit
As you can see, there is no prioritization and these items aren’t categorized. I have to read from top to bottom every time I look at the list to determine what’s most important and what I want to do next. This is highly inefficient and using a list in this way will probably cause you to abandon using it or waste time, let’s avoid both.
What to leave off your To Do list?
You’ll notice I don’t put really basic recurring tasks on my To Do list. Things like pick up the kids, do the laundry, go to the store, get gas. These items come and go so frequently that they just clutter your To Do list and make it unmanagable. For recurring things, I use a weekly schedule which I draw up each Sunday night or Monday morning. In next week’s post, I’ll show you how I do it, this simple tool will revolutionize your productivity!
Organize Your List
You can see some patterns in the list above, right? Your list will be the same.
Create your list.
After you do a brain dump of your To Dos, take your list and sort it using these three steps:
Bucket related items: In this case we’d use work, household, and finances
Think about complexity and time needed
Prioritize
Here’s the same list but Bucketed by Categories and Prioritized within each category:
Work:
Update Monthly report for January
Build website
Create 3 year forecast
Get drone for ribbon cutting
Household:
Back up photos from January
Book 4 day weekend in April
Sign up kids for summer camp
Weather seal doors in house
Sell Mountain Bike dropper post lever
Wash Car
Shampoo car seats
Build fence in back yard
Fix ceiling fan in G’s room
Create handmade sign for home address
Put together emergency kit
Build table for back yard
Finances:
Prepare 2024 Taxes
Modify Spotify account
Do monthly personal balance sheet
Use as many categories as you need. If your list is really long, you’ll want more categories, if your list is short, you might not need any categories. If you have 1 list with 150 items and no prioritization, you are doing it wrong!
Breaking Complex To Dos into individual tasks
For each complex To Do, you should break it into smaller tasks. Thinking through a To Do in this way makes doing the thing much more straightforward. Taxes are a good example of a complex To Do that you should break down into individual tasks. Here is my breakdown of this nasty annual requirement.
Prepare 2024 Taxes:
Download all tax documents from 2024
Scan receipts from 2024
Put all scans in 2024 folder
Enter all 2024 info into spreadsheet
Send spreadsheet with supporting info to accountant
Review draft taxes and send updates
Print, sign and submit taxes
Clearly, a To Do like preparing taxes is going to take way longer than washing the car. Based on the list above and the stacks of receipts I have, I estimate 10-15 miserable hours. Plus, we all know there’s a deadline to getting taxes done whereas washing the car is a nice to have not a need to have.
How much should you break down a To Do? Get it down to manageable chunks, whatever that means for you. For instance, backup January photos could be further broken down into:
“Favorite” photos from January that I want to keep on my phone
Plug phone into computer and upload January photos
Export January photos from Mac Photos program into folder on Dropbox
Create subfolders in 2025 for each event
Drop photos into their proper subfolders using date format YYMMDD
Manually delete the unfavorited January photos from phone
When I first started backing up photos monthly, I wrote down all the subtasks to help me understand the process. Now that I’ve been doing it a while, I just write the To Do and know all the subtasks required.
Where to Keep your To Do list
I like to keep my To Do list in Google Tasks which you already have if you use Gmail and can easily access in the right sidebar from your email (see red box below).
On my iPhone, I have the Tasks app from Google downloaded. Your Gmail task list and the Task app sync perfectly so you can manage your list at home or while on the move. One really nice feature of this free tool is you can also break complex ToDos into simple tasks then check off each subtask when completed.
I also go old school and keep a written and categorized list of my To Dos in a journal that I carry with me, I find it easier to organize things while on paper. I also like writing down things when I think about them at night rather than getting on my phone. While it may be annoying to keep a written and a digital list, you also get the satisfaction of marking completed item off twice! If you can keep only a written or digital list, that is probably better, but I find having both is better for me.
Maintaining a To Do List
Once you have a To Do list, you need to use it! That means adding to it and hopefully checking things off weekly. If your list seems insanely long, think about who can help get items done.
For the really unpleasant To Dos, consider paying someone else to handle for you. In my case, building that back yard fence is something I want to do but I really don’t want to dig the holes and put in posts with concrete. I’m considering paying someone to do that subtask and taking care of the rest of the project.
Completing your To Do List
You will always have things To Do. You should always have a list that you can refer to so you stay on track for what you want to get done. Sure, the shitter may be full and that can derail the other items on your list for a bit but now that you have a system, you’ll get back on track faster and will feel less stress and anxiety as a result.
Are there any tools you use to keep your To Dos organized? Anything you like better than what I suggested or which work best for you? Please share in the comments.