The Best Tips to Creating a Basic To-Do List

We’re coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Get-it-Done Guy, and there’s so much to prepare: parties to throw, Oreo ice cream cake to be arranged, episodes to be planned, and zombie reanimation powder to be ordered. It’s clearly time for a list.

And as I pull out my handy dandy paper to-do list (as you can read about in the episode on using a paper to-do list), I realize...in ten years, we’ve explored some of the advanced ways of creating a to-do list, but we’ve never covered the basics. 

Today, that changes.

The Basic To-Do List: 6 Essential Ingredients

1. Use complete sentences
2. Make completion unambiguous
3. Note due dates
4. Pay attention to priorities
5. Use the "Little and Often" approach
6. Prune it. Then prune some more.

Let's dive further into each to-do list tip.

1. Use Complete Sentences

A to-do list is a list of tasks to do. And by “do,” I mean “take action.” As we all recall from 2nd grade grammar, where Mrs. Johnson used to terrify us into submission by threatening to conjugate our parts of speech, or dangle our participles out the window, action words are verbs, and verbs belong in a to-do list.

It’s tempting to jot down a to-do item that says, “zombie reanimation powder.” But then, when you get to that to-do item, you might not remember what you meant by that. Are you supposed to order more? Or get rid of the five-year-past-the-expiration date you have sitting on the shelf? Or maybe mix some up into a tasty smoothie to serve at funerals? The verb matters.

So don’t just write:

• Anniversary party
• Oreo ice cream cake
• Episodes
• Zombie reanimation powder

Make sure your tasks have verbs:

• Throw anniversary party
• Arrange Oreo ice cream cake
• Plan episodes; and
• Order zombie reanimation powder.

2. Make Completion Unambiguous

You’d think that “arrange Oreo ice cream cake” would be a great to-do item. It has a verb. It has a noun, and that noun is “Oreo ice cream cake.” What’s not to love?

What’s not to love is that “arrange” is too vague. Oreo ice cream cake can be ordered out. It can be prepared lovingly in your own ice cream maker. Even once it’s on the table, “arrange” might mean moving it so the light hits it just so. And is "arranging" something that happens once? Or do you have to monitor it, and keep making sure it’s presentable until the last, delectable slice is gone?

Choose verbs that are specific enough that you know when they’re done. “Order ice cream cake.” “Prepare ice cream cake from scratch.” “Place ice cream cake on serving table in good lighting.” Use verbs, and make sure you know when they’re complete.

Beware especially open-ended tasks like “research doomsday devices” or “think about cornering the world’s supply of thread.” You can research and think forever. Put some kind of limit in your task. “Research doomsday devices by watching Dr. Strangelove all the way to the end” or “Spend 15 minutes thinking about cornering the thread market.” While 15 minutes is an arbitrary number, if it’s not enough time, you can always add it back to the end of your list.

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3. Note Due Dates

If a task absolutely has to be done by a certain date, choose a way to notate that in your list, rather than assuming you’ll magically remember it. “Recruit world-saving cohort of super heroes by December 19th.” That way, when you scan your task list on December 1st, you’ll realize that you have only 18 days to get on Wonder Woman’s calendar. Otherwise, it’s easy to procrastinate indefinitely.

4. Priorities

Some people record priorities for each to-do item. I tend not to do that. My priorities change regularly, depending on what’s going on in my life, and some part of my brain knows what’s most important on any given day. If you’re like me, what works better is scanning my full task list daily, and pulling out the things that seem like top priorities on that particular day. 

5. Little and Often

You can even work on a top priority for a little while, then switch away for a bit and later switch back. Just re-add things to your list if you don’t finish them. Some people process their list item by item, and finish one item completely before moving on to the next. You can also adopt productivity guru Mark Forster’s approach of “little and often.” You only work on a task as much as you feel like. Then you cross it off your list, and if you didn’t finish it, you add it back to the end of your list.

The tasks you're skipping car be dropped. You won't finish them anyway.

(We’ve explored Mark’s Autofocus task handling system in a prior episode. It combines scanning with “little-and-often.” He’s working on a new way to work through to-do lists, and I’ll do an episode on that as soon as he releases it.)

6. Your List Will Grow. Prune It.

One thing you can be sure of: your list will grow infinitely, faster than you can strike things off it. Every now and then, review your list and remove anything that doesn’t seem important any more. Just keep in mind that you only have a certain amount of time and energy, and if you keep skipping some tasks in favor of others, it means that some part of your brain is very clear that the tasks you’re skipping can be dropped because, well, you won’t get to them anyway. Welcome to being human.

To-do lists are often the cornerstone of personal productivity. Give all your to-do items verbs and nouns both. Make sure they’re specific enough so you know when you’ve completed them. Note down due dates, and add priorities if it makes sense, given your work style. Then, start working your list, using Autofocus 4 or some other method that works for you. Pretty soon, your Oreo ice cream cake will be perfectly positioned on your tenth anniversary table, ready to share with all your friends, reanimated or not.

I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. Want great keynote speeches on productivity, Living an Extraordinary Life, or entrepreneurship? Hire me! Find me at http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6 .

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!