Comments on: How To Ensure To-Do Lists Don’t Overrun Your Life

By: Bernd C.

Bernd C. — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 10:03:29 +0000

I want to re-emphasize Justin’s point: It is about how you process all your inputs and how you transform them into actionable items (only a handful of capture tools to make sure you captured everything, process them regularly into your action lists by context and use those lists to guide your actions).
Technology comes second! While it has all the advantages Laura mentioned, it should serve you and not the other way around.
As an example, I do use a combination of a paper-based planner (where i physically write down what i want to do daily and weekly) and the Task list in Outlook (we use it in our company, so i did not want to have my to-do lists somewhere else), categorized by context and role.
To Anita’s question: You can have your “items to bring up with others” as separate contexts in your To-Do list.
This approach works rather well for me both privately and professionally, while I know i can improve on that.

And on Laura’s final comment (Have an action “Make To-Do list” on your to-do list): That should be part of your Weekly Review and i would put this as a recurring meeting with myself on my calendar.

By: Anita L.

Anita L. — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 21:13:07 +0000

I’ll investigate the tools Laura G. suggests, but does anyone else have some suggested tools to help organize? I need something where I can organize My To-Do’s (and see them by project category OR priority OR due date), My Ideas (by project category), My items to bring up with others (by person or by meeting title). I’ve tried OneNote, but with no success and haven’t found any other online tool that isn’t calendar based. All the notebook-like planners I look at are calendar based and not what I can use. Perhaps I just have to invent the ultimate app!

By: Laura G.

Laura G. — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 23:04:29 +0000

Your response was a good start, but I’d also add that there are some great apps out there that can be used for list making and even some that can be shared with others, to make those to-do lists even more useful. For example, my husband and I use the Keep Notes app for grocery lists and lists for certain stores (like Walmart) so that we can both add items to those lists and whoever goes to that store next knows what they need to get there. I also use Keep and another app, ColorNote, to keep track of errands and chores I need to accomplish.

On more of a work note, I keep my main work to-do list in Excel. My spreadsheet has seven columns. The first column is for the things I need to do. The next three columns are columns I use to help prioritize my to-dos — in each column, I rate each item (on a scale of 1-3) by how urgent it is, how important it is, and how quick it is to do it. This is followed by a Total column that adds up the values from the previous three columns. (I then sort within each “tied” total by ranking the quick-to-dos first, followed by the urgent, then by the important, but sometimes I’ll change the order around manually, if I don’t think the result reflects the actual order I need to do the stuff in well enough.) The sixth column is where I put the completed date. The final column allows me to add any comments I might have about the to-do item. I know this all sounds kinda complicated, but it really isn’t, once you get the hang of it. I also have a Completed tab in that workbook, to which I transfer items once they’re done. This makes for an easy place to check for my accomplishments when performance review time rolls around!

Finally, I recently found a Chrome browser add-in called Momentum. Each time I open a new “blank” tab, I get a nice, varying, background picture with a place for me to type in my main focus for the day and another place to put a little mini to-do list (which I use for more immediate to-dos). It also displays the time, temperature at my location, and a daily quote. (I think all of that is configurable, if you don’t want to have all of those things.)

The nice things about using technology to keep to-do lists is that a) they’re less likely to get lost, b) they can be shareable, and c) it’s easier to move items around and/or change them.

Oh, and here’s one last tip that my husband taught me….when making a to-do list, put “make to-do list” on the list so you have something you can cross off right away when you’re done making the list, lol! 😉

By: Karen Wells

Karen Wells — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:02:29 +0000

Super helpfu. My best tool for last year was the To – DON’T list.