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You are here: Home / Personal Development / 5 Steps of My To-Do Lists Revolution

5 Steps of My To-Do Lists Revolution

April 13, 2006 by Gleb Reys 23 Comments

I've been using to-do lists both at work and at home for the past few years now. And while I couldn't complain about my overall performance, there was always something not right about the way I'd used them, yet I couldn't tell what exactly it was.

Just a few weeks ago I've finally realised what had been troubling me for so long: my to-do lists! What you're about to read may seem obvious and simple enough, but trust me: I really wish someone had explained to me this reason of my daily frustration a long time ago! So here it is: my own to-do lists revolution!

 

My original to-do lists setup

I had hand-written lists for each day in my A4 year planner, I would usually prepare such lists at the end of a previous day. Having finished all the work, I would take 5 minutes of my time before leaving my workplace to summarize the day's achievements and overview the stuff I never got a chance to work on to the following day's to-do list. I would also cross off all the completed tasks to make sure I can see my progress.

I had originally used the page-a-day approach. So no matter how few or many tasks I'd have for the day, they all would be on only 1 page for this day. But I quickly learned that such an approach is one of the worst possible. Simply because it doesn't work unless you manage to finish every single task you had planned for your day.

It all became obvious after I failed to complete the whole list of planned things for a day, and had to somehow keep track of the things so that they get my attention paid to them at some later stage. And this is where I saw just how ineffective it was to try and support this approach in any way possible. No matter what you do, you're going to lose time. I couldn't let this happen for any longer, and so that's how my to-do lists revolution began.

Below are the 5 steps I've gone through to come up with the most effective way of dealing with my daily tasks so far. Having improved my process so much, I'm absolutely certain there is room for even more improvement, so I'll be sure to describe it on my pages later.

 

Reviewing the past few day's to-do lists

The first thing I tried was to make the review of the past few days' lists my daily routine. This worked reasonably well while I had a backlog of few days, but it became a nightmare as soon as the backlog grew to more than two weeks. Having more and more tasks on my new to-do lists and trying to do follow up with the really important tasks, I could spend less and less time looking back and review some old stuff. Yet, now and then I'd realised something which was left out and didn't seem to be important when it was a week old, is quite urgent now that it's been few weeks since I never got a chance to deal with this task. So after struggling for a while, I gave this method up.

 

Keeping track of all the incomplete tasks

Secondly, I've decided to start moving all the incomplete tasks to the following day's plan. I made it a rule – never start adding items to the current day's to-do list unless I'm positive all the previously forgotten or never deal with tasks are at the top of this list. Again, it worked for a while, but as the list of tasks grew, I'd realised my daily to-do list routine is slowly turning into nothing but stupid rewriting of my previous days' to-do lists. I would actually waste my precious time by making yet another list of something I couldn't find time to do.

 

Basic scheduling – marking the stand and end dates for tasks

So the next thing I figured I needed to incorporate into my routine was scheduling. It makes perfect sense – to mark the date when adding something to your to-do list. You need it for historical purposes. Trying to improve the previous paragraph's idea, I started not only rewriting all the incomplete tasks of mine, but also putting the date of each tasks' origination alongside. This helped a lot. This made it obvious that some tasks have been left unattended for way too long. This improved the decision-making because it was clearly seen again how bad a backlog of things I had. It saves my time of thinking back and trying to remember when I was actually going to do a given task, and the date of its supposed start provided the urgency reminder I really found useful. Still, it was not enough, so I've tried to see what else would really help me optimize my process.

 

Throw away your to-do lists

This was the stage where I was much more efficient compared to where I started. So not only I was motivated to continue improving my process, but I also started thinking of changing the most basic parts of it. I've realised that one of the things which was noticeably slowing me down was the fact that I used to-do lists and no other way of keeping track of my tasks.

Even as simple thing as a review of my to-do list for the day would take much longer due to a simple fact that no matter what I did, all the tasks were still left on the same page. So when I would have a task or two completed, I'd tick them off or even color-mark them as being really completed, but this would still leave these tasks on my page. And no matter how hard you try to skip these tasks knowing that they're completed, you still lose some time quickly glancing through them. Time lost on glancing once a day is not so harmful when you think about it. But if you have to get back to your list more than a few times during your day, you'll start noticing how this very glancing through to-do list slows you down.

And that's how I decided to get rid of to-do lists completely. Instead, I've got myself a 5-section A4 organizer, and started using the smallest post-it notes I could find to manage my tasks for the day. So one section of this organizer would be used for all the tasks for the current day. Another section would be the one for the tasks for the whole current week. There's also one for the month (where I temporarily put EVERYTHING that doesn't belong to this week's plan), and there's the completed tasks section.

The main reason for switching to post-its is that I can accomplish all the things I did with to-do lists (like tracking tasks, marking the start dates and marking tasks as deferred or completed ones), PLUS I can MOMENTARILY get completed tasks out of the plan for today. If it sounds too simple for the best to-do list optimization trick, TRY IT yourself!

I can't emphasize enough the sheer pleasure and feeling of satisfaction you have when you mark a tasks completed, and then immediately detach it from current day's list and physically move it into the completed section. As you progress through your day, or get to visibly notice the amount of things left to be done. As soon as something's done, you get rid of it – and therefore you can simply see the current state of things by glancing at a page quickly. Many post-its – many tasks, few post-its – few tasks. It's that simple!

 

Completion dates for all the tasks

Now that I've made a major progress in my daily planning, I only felt like tweaking the process a bit to make it even better. So one of the things I've finally decided to start doing is putting completion dates for all the tasks. Combined with the start dates I've been adding to my tasks for some time by now, completion dates gave me the last bit of comfort I needed to make sure I'm doing the best I can. If start dates were there to ensure I know exactly when I'd put the task on my list and to help me realise the urgency and growing importance of some tasks, the completion dates helped me analyze whether I was coping with the load okay, or whether some particular kinds of tasks were constantly forgotten about, or whether some task took much longer that I originally expected. All I need now is to have a half-an-hour a week spent solely on such analysis – as any tweaks I made to my planning based based on such analysis results have the potential to bring my performance to an even higher level.

 

What happens now?

That's all I've done so far. My To-Do Lists Revolution isn't fully over, but it starts to look and – more importantly – feel like an evolution to me now. There's no major part to change in the process as I'm very happy with the results. I'm spending less time planning and managing my daily tasks, and with the revolution I've gone through I'm not afraid of any tasks – no matter how big or complex. I'm still working on other possible ways to improve my daily planning approach, so who knows – maybe once day I'll have another revolution to blog about! ;) Till then – good luck!

Filed Under: Personal Development, Productivity

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Bea says

    April 19, 2006 at 6:59 am

    Once more, Gleb, you are making me think a lot!

    I think I’ll try this to-do lists approach of yours, above all at home, because my attempts are not being any successful right now (what I do now, or try to do, is write my tasks in my PDA “tasks” section, which I never look, so it’s no use).

    At work my system is using the “tasks” section of Outlook, and though I’m sure I can improve it, it’s working more or less OK. But at home I don’t have a PC screen in front of me all the time, so I think it will be useful to have some physical reminder of my pending tasks… I’ll try the post-its and let you know ;:-)

    Reply
  2. Gleb Reys says

    April 19, 2006 at 8:50 am

    Good luck with this, Bea!

    This is only the first part of a series of posts of mine on productivity, so be sure to come back later for more. After I’m done with to-do lists, I’ll start exploring the computer-based approaches, because this would is essentially the way to go. I’ve got an idea or two to try out first, but I’ll definitely post about my experiments here, so you’ll be among the first to know! :)

    Thanks for the comment!

    Reply
  3. Mmm... Life... says

    August 13, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    Great post. I’m always adding to my to do lists faster than I can cross things off. So many posts out there on how to make to-do lists, and not enough like yours — that talk about how to whittle them down. Keep up the great work.

    Reply
  4. Gleb Reys says

    August 14, 2006 at 1:40 am

    Hi Luigi!

    Thanks for finding time to leave a comment. I see you’ve been blogging about life and personal growth for about two month now? Best of luck with this!

    Hope to see you around!

    Reply
  5. isabella mori says

    November 5, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    i can’t agree with you more. i used to whip myself with to-do lists, too, in similar ways. love the sticky notes idea (am a big fan of sticky notes). another version of that is what mary kay suggests (a smart businesswoman if there ever was one), which is to NEVER have more than 6 things on your to do list for each day, and then get them all out of the way first thing in the morning.

    what’s worked well for me was to change the wording – i started calling it a wish list. that made it less daunting. for a while, when i was part of an online business support group, i would also post my three goals for the week with that support group first thing monday morning. that was also very helpful.

    Reply
  6. Gleb Reys says

    November 6, 2006 at 12:16 am

    Hi Isabella!

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

    You know something really interesting? I came to doing exactly the same – setting 6 things for me to do every day, and then prioritizing the rest. So, if I get an urgent request which is important, I know that I have to take something else off the list, because I’m not allowing myself to have more than 6 things on the list. I never knew it was an idea by Mary Kay, though. So thanks for letting me know!

    And you idea of having wish lists instead of to-do lists sounds like a very good habit to develop. Will give it a try :)

    All the best, Isabella! Hope to see you on my website again!

    Reply
  7. Adolf De Necker says

    July 7, 2007 at 8:10 am

    Hi
    I think to do lists is good ,but i added a DDA ( daily deliberet action) plan to mine.Its make thing a easier
    Regards

    Reply
  8. Gleb Reys says

    July 16, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    Hi Adolf!

    Yes, I have my top 3 things to do for every day, on top of a regular to-do list. I agree, it does help a lot!

    Reply
  9. NitroG says

    September 22, 2007 at 1:04 am

    I had a mentor (thanks Jackie W) who had a system that really works for my to-do-list.
    1. Write this in your diary.
    2. Review at the end of the day.
    3. Cross off all items, whether achieved or not.
    4. Reschedule all items not done immediately, in terms of priority and urgency.
    5. Repeat….
    This stops me from having to look back in my diary, whether analogue or digital to remind me of what has to be done.

    Nitro

    Reply
    • Gleb Reys says

      September 22, 2007 at 1:09 am

      Thanks for sharing your approach!

      I do more or less the same nowadays. Reviewing things in the evening makes sure you start thinking of the most important things for the day to come, so when you wake up you’re ready to start working on them.

      Reply
  10. rudanici says

    December 8, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Thanx a bunch. really like ur ideas, and how u present them

    Reply
  11. Ashvin says

    January 15, 2008 at 3:54 am

    this is a very useful concept. For those electronically inclined you can do the same thing (postponing or marking complete a task) in a clickable format using rememberthemilk.com (my current favorite) or toodledo.com or vitalist (tried this one and generally less enthused about it). The first one is quite useful because of the integration with Gmail. Anyhow, I won’t continue proselytizing too much but for me the electronic versions seem to work better than paper (cause I don’t want to lug around an organizer). But the concept of getting things off your page and using a system so that you’re not copying the same postponed tasks over and over each day makes very good sense.

    Reply
  12. Gleb Reys says

    January 15, 2008 at 6:31 am

    Thanks, Ashvin and Ici!

    Reply
  13. Alexey Peskov says

    April 1, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Hello.
    Thank you for the article.
    Like you I always use to-do lists to organize my routine and I’ve experimented with it quite a lot. I think your idea of a blackboard (A4 paper in your case) with areas for each kind of tasks – it’s a good idea. But for me I’m using slightly different approach – instead of dividing areas by time I’m dividing them by priority: must do (the most urgent), should do, nice do, can delegate, can eliminate (the less urgent). When I get the new task to do I think whether it’s possible to accomplish it immediately or not. If I can – I do it, if not – I decide where it’s better to place this new task, in which category. Each day I try to complete all my tasks from the first category and in the end of the day I look through all these groups and rearrange all the tasks. Very often I find some task not important or not actual (usually it happens with tasks from last category) and remove them from my list. Currently I’m using a mind-mapping tool for keeping this tree of tasks (you can find a screenshot in my blog), but recently I’ve started to think that it would be better to bring it offline. So I’m going to try out a blackboard and stickers approach.
    Another group of tasks I have had (now I’m using another approach) – weekly tasks. Again it’s a subtree where I have days as branches of a current week root and when I’m planning my week and days I place tasks as a leaf of correspondent branch.
    Now I’m not using this approach because of extra paper work and I just have a general tree of tasks grouped by priority and a small sheet of paper where I have a short list of tasks for current day. I don’t track the history of tasks because I don’t know why should I need it – I made the task, I got result, that’s all.

    Thank you.

    Reply
  14. Gleb Reys says

    April 1, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Thanks, Alexey!

    I agree with you – knowing how important and/or urgent a task is more vital than just plan to finish a task on a certain day. This approach of mine has been a great start to my further research into productivity and tasks organization, but I have certainly moved on since then.

    Thanks for sharing your ideas! Hope to see you again!

    Reply
  15. Diego Fernandez says

    September 28, 2011 at 8:02 am

    Dear Gleb,

    After so many years this article is completely up to date. After reading it I have reconsidered (again) the way I deal with my tasks.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts and methodologies.

    All the best.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. 5 Steps of My To-Do Lists Revolution - lifehack.org says:
    April 13, 2006 at 8:12 am

    […] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers canshare and discover new web pages. […]

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  2. Having To-Do Lists Is Just Not Enough · Personal Development Ideas Blog says:
    May 9, 2006 at 6:39 am

    […] I’m not a to-do lists person. Not anymore, anyway. You’ll see what I mean if you read about my recent To-Do Lists Revolution. Still, I have deliberately left quite a room for developing the topic, so there it is – yet another blog entry on to-do lists. Thoughts described below are just an opinion of mine, and the aim of this entry is to help you make up your own view of to-do lists and decide whether they really are the best tool available for managing your daily tasks. To-do lists are supposed to be a fairly simple and self-explanatory concept. You make and follow these lists to do stuff. Usually we refer to our daily to-do lists, but it’s not uncommon to have weekly or even monthly to-do lists as well. To-Do lists are great for getting more things done that you’d normally do without such lists, but at the same time they’re not so great for lots of other aspects of your activities. In other words, simply having to-do lists is just not enough to stay on top of things. And in this entry, I’m going you show you why, and I will give you examples of how to-do lists don’t encourage and sometimes even slow down your progress. […]

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  3. Performance or Balance: What’s More Important? · Personal Development Ideas Blog says:
    May 29, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    […] As you have probably read in My To-Do Lists Revolution article before, I’ve gone through few stages of various optimizations in search of the most efficient way of organizing all the things I have to do. […]

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    June 8, 2006 at 1:22 am

    […] I’ve been using the evaluation version 1.5.06 of MyLife Organized to replace the organizing process I had been using after my recent to-do lists revolution. So far it’s proved to be reasonably easy to manage tasks using this software, but I’m still not sure if it’s the ideal solution for me, and I’ll explain why. […]

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    June 14, 2006 at 1:48 am

    […] Although I’m pretty happy with the success of using first 5-section A4 organizer and then the MyLifeOrganized software for keeping track of my daily tasks and plans, I’m still looking for an even better way to manage tasks. […]

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