To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!

by Damon Zahariades

You can arrange the Post-It notes so that it’s easy to see how individual tasks flow within a larger construct.

Fourth, you can use different colored Post-It notes to represent varying levels of priority. For example, use red for high-priority items, yellow for medium-priority items, and blue for low-priority items. The Kanban method’s biggest strength is its visual presentation.

You can use apps like Trello, KanbanFlow, LeanKit, and Kanbanote.

I recommend Trello. It’s free and user-friendly.

Color-coding can be an effective solution; different colors can be used to indicate task-level priority. But even then, your ability to monitor a large volume of to-do items will be limited.

#9 - The Matrix System

The Matrix system was popularized by the late Stephen Covey, author of the acclaimed book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is also known as the “Eisenhower Box.” The same principles apply to both. It’s a tool used to decide how to allocate one’s time among competing tasks.

A matrix is made up of four quadrants titled as follows: Important - Urgent

Important - Not Urgent No...

- Urgent Not Important - ...

This system provides an easy way to see which to-do items warrant your attention and which can be ignored. You’ll be able to easily identify items associated with your most important work. They’ll be found in Quadrants I and II. You’ll also be able to disregard those that will have minimal impact. These will be found in Quadrant IV.

You’ll find yourself constantly asking “Is this task necessary?” as you review your matrix.

You’ll end up spending more time on high-value items and wasting less time on low-value ones. One of the drawbacks of this approach is that it doesn’t require you to provide context for the tasks in the matrix’s four quadrants. No mention is made concerning how long each task will take to complete, nor its connection with other tasks and projects.

let’s take a look at the final - and arguably the most popular - task management system used today: Getting Things Done (GTD).

#10 - Getting Things Done (GTD)

David Allen’s Getting Things Done is one of the most celebrated task management systems in use today. Interestingly, it has as many detractors as it has advocates (for reasons we’ll get to in a moment). Here are the basics: You have a lot of stuff swimming around in your head. Most of it remains uncategorized in terms of context, priority, and intended outcomes.

GTD seeks to get this stuff out of your head and onto a list. It makes each item actionable, thereby closing the open loops. Once items are on a master list, you spend time organizing them according to context. Part of this process entails creating multiple lists and placing items where they belong. A weekly review is performed to stay on top of things. That’s a simplified explanation of GTD (entire books have been written about it). It will suffice for our purposes.