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Using a More Effective To-Do List Best Practice

A traditional to-do list cannot effectively capture all the details you need to remember, it can only capture the general tasks.

The reason is that when you add more and more items to the list, it becomes really hard to manage.

Here is what a typical to-do list might look like:
* Call John regarding client presentation figures
* Prepare outline for client presentation
* Research for project proposal
* Call Terry regarding Steve's retirement party
* Reserve room and drinks for Steve's party
* Add support for searching database based on ordered parts
* Call Perry regarding features for next release
* Pick-up anniversary card on way home
* Pick-up dry cleaning
* Take Rover to vet
... tons more items follow

To really capture everything that you need to do, your list could easily grow into hundreds of items and become a real mess!

Because a traditional To-Do list becomes unmanageable with so many items, you invariably omit some of the details and just write high-level reminders instead, leaving it up to your memory to keep track of all the little details.

Pretty soon, your head is so full of little details that you start forgetting important things, find it difficult to focus or concentrate, or feel completely overwhelmed!

If you could capture and keep track of all these details using a more effective list, your feelings of anxiety, stress, and overwhelm would fade, you would be able to focus and concentrate better on the task at hand, and your productivity would soar as you make steady progress on each task.

This article shows you how to build this kind of list.

Creating a More Effective To-Do List

Instead of lumping everything together into one big list, an effective To-Do list separates the concepts of projects and tasks and uses different ways to track them.

A project represents a high level outcome or result, whether it involves a single or multiple steps.

A task represents the actions or steps needed to complete a project.

For example, you need to give a presentation to an important group of clients. This is the project representing your overall goal.

To prepare your presentation, you may need to do some research, create an outline, develop props and other creative materials, write the presentation details, and prepare some handouts. These are your tasks.

Separating projects and tasks helps you better use your time by allowing you to focus on outcomes instead of just actions. You'll find that focusing on a specific project for a chunk of time is more effective that jumping from one unrelated task to another.

You'll also be able to plan and organize each project individually, grouping all related to-do items as a part of their project, and significantly reduce the size of your main To-Do list.

When it is time to work on a specific project, you can concentrate on the project's tasks without getting distracted by other projects or tasks.

My personal master project list has twenty active items at this time, about a tenth of the total number of to-do items I'm tracking.

In general, a project list could have anywhere from ten to fifty items and still remain manageable. 

The Master Project List for the example presented above would look something like this:

• Client presentation for ACME Corporation

• Project proposal for new product

• Steve's Retirement Party

• Database Search Feature (ordered parts) for company website

• Release 2.0 Planning

• Anniversary Celebration

• Pick-up dry cleaning

• Take Rover to vet

Notice that the focus of the master project list is not on individual actions such as making calls, gathering information, or preparing an outline. The focus is on the outcomes you are trying to accomplish.

The individual actions associated with each project are placed in a separate task list (part of the Project Plan) containing all the to-do's for the project.

Your master project list will be smaller than an equivalent To-Do list and much easier to organize, prioritize, and schedule.

Projects could be things you need to do right now, things that you have to do sometime in the future, or even things that you may want to do later but haven't decided yet.

Everything in your original to-do list should be either a project or a task of a project.

Small Vs. Large Projects

You may notice that some projects are small (pick-up dry cleaning) and require little or no planning, while others are large and complex, and may require significant planning.

Simple items like "Pick-up dry cleaning" and "Take Rover to vet" are treated as projects because they don't belong to a higher level outcome. They are the outcome.

Keeping them in your master project list allows you see them along with all your other outcomes and avoid losing track of them.

You could create a "Miscellaneous" project to capture these simple one-step projects, but I personally prefer to keep them in the master project list as long as it remains uncluttered.

If you start tracking too many of these small items, however, it may be better to store them as tasks under a "Miscellaneous" project instead.

The Achieve Planner software is an effective project/task tracking tool that I wrote and personally use every day. It provides hierarchical (multi-level) outlines separated by projects and tasks. You can try Achieve Planner free for 30 days.

Achieve Planner software separates projects/tasks using hierarchical outlines

The Master Your Time time management eBook covers these concepts in much greater depth, including how to build and manage your effective to-do list.

Related Articles (time management guide):

• Time Management System

• Using Your Memory to Keep Track of Things Worst Practice

• Master Project List Best Practice

• Project Plans Best Practice

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