Simplifying is very popular right now – with many even saying it’s the new productivity – and with good reason too. Nowadays we get bombarded with stuff everywhere we go, whether it be via the zillion channels on TV and radio, the squillion blogs that cover every potential interest you might have or the bazillion emails filling up your inbox… Too. Much. Input. Most of it is crap too. Sorry, but it’s true. You know that massive TV subscription you have? How many channels do you actually watch regularly? How many of those emails can be deleted without a second glance? I could go on but I think it would be more interesting if you guys share your own input dilemmas. Yes, it’s great to have so much choice but that doesn’t mean it’s all quality.
This brings me to the issue of simplifying your to-do list. Last weekend I was feeling a little unfocused and unproductive. If I’m feeling fuzzy headed there is usually a small handful of reasons. Either I’m tired, hungover or I haven’t figured out what I need to be doing with my time and in this case it certainly wasn’t the first two. I wanted to get back to basics™ and focus on the most important tasks™.
So I looked at my to-do list and started trimming out projects that I didn’t need to do, items that had been on there so long that they were surely never going to be started, stuff that served merely as reminders rather than actual tasks and so on ( I wrote before about what can be trimmed from a to-do list so check that post for more insights). By the end my to-do list was slim and streamlined… and I was still fuzzy headed (I’d definitely, definitely not drank the night before).
The problem is, all those tasks I’d trimmed off my to-do list had been there for a reason. They came from somewhere in my head. I’d obviously felt the need to do it, be reminded of it or required the motivation for it at some point. Now that they weren’t on my to-do list, the only place for them to go was back into my head. And we all know it’s NOT the place for stuff like that, right?
The answer, I found, to having a streamlined to-do list and still catching every potential to-do item that might otherwise float around in your head is to keep them seperate. I use my weekly planner to list those small number of tasks I really need to be focusing on daily, and a seperate to-do list which I use to catch everything else. No limits, no rules. As long as it’s down on a sheet that regularly gets checked I don’t have to worry about whether it’s cluttering up my weekly planner or my brain. I discussed this on Twitter with Patrick Rhone and Pascal Venier who both proposed their own (similar) approaches. Why not share yours?
January 26, 2009 at 04:22PM
I utilize that strategy as well except with post-it notes. I use my laptop at least 50% of my day so I have one post-it on the left of the trackpad and one on the right. The left is used for tasks that need to get done while the right is used for those random thoughts that need to get out of my head, like you said in your post. I also have some post-it notes via a program on my computer for the long-term tasks that I know I will not really ever get to or ones that I know are going to take some time to complete.