Start Organized, Stay Organized: To Do Lists

Photo credit: john.schultz on Flickr

“If you can’t do anything about it now, don’t worry about it until you can. If you can do something about it now, then do it.” My Dad told me that one night many years ago as I laid awake stressing about all the things I used to stress about, and I haven’t really forgotten it.

I haven’t always been a To-Do list user. The process of sorting through all of my anxious thoughts to list the things I need to do resulted in feeling more anxious than I was before I began. Seeing a list of tasks that need doing while knowing that I don’t have time to do them all stressed  me out. My “do what I am stressing about most” method had worked well for years, if you don’t count all of those things that I overlooked and forgot about.

I have come to realize that the practice of using a To-Do list can actually be stress-reducing if the list is used and kept up to date daily. Having a list of what needs to be done takes pressure off the mind and makes room for the mental energy needed to actually get things done. And having a To-Do list on hand can help avoid distractions when doing a task.

Here are my tips on how to effectively integrate a To-Do list into your daily life, as well as my favourite To-Do list technology.

Start Right Now and Don’t Stop

Don’t put off making your To-Do list. It is so simple that you can really start implementing it at any time. Start jotting down those things that are pressing on your mind right now. Begin by simply organizing them into a Today category, a Tomorrow category, and a Later category. Write all the tasks that need doing today and stop when you no longer have anything in mind. Keep the list close as you go about your day and add to it whenever another pressing task comes to mind. Do this even when you’re in bed! Being able to offload those racing thoughts at night can help encourage better sleep.

Photo Credit: Galymzhan Abdugalimov via Unsplashed

Cross Things Off

Embrace the feeling of accomplishment that comes from crossing each task off your list. No matter how big or small the task is, completing a task makes you slightly more productive than you were before completion. Consider rewarding yourself, especially when you cross off the most gnawing tasks. And when you find yourself constantly ignoring a task instead of crossing it off, remove it from your To-Do list entirely. There’s no sense in keeping tasks on the list that realistically aren’t important enough to get done.

Prioritize

Apart from organizing tasks by date, highlight important tasks. It can be easy to be bogged down by all the things that need to be completed, but prioritizing will let you focus on a few important and interesting tasks at a time.

Cheat a Little

If you find that you aren’t feeling very productive one day, add things to your list that you have already accomplished so that you can have the feeling of crossing items off. Just convincing yourself that you are getting even the smallest things done can help kick start the energy you’ll need to be even more productive.

Integrate a To-Do List into your Digital Life with Any.Do

I’m a huge fan of Any.Do for my To-Do list. In fact, until I found Any.Do, I hadn’t stuck with using To-Do lists because they simply didn’t integrate into my life very well. I needed a list that was easy to access, quick to add to, and simple to organize. Any.Do has proved to be all of that and more. Any.Do allows me to manage my To-Do list directly from my phone, my desktop computer, and even my email. I am rarely in a situation where these things aren’t available to me and so I never have to find my To-Do list as it is generally always an arm’s reach or click away.

Download the App and the Extension

Any.Do is available for free on the iOS App Store and on Google Play, so if you have an iPhone or Android, you’re in luck. Create an account and sync it with Google Calendar if you’ve been keeping your To-Do list there up to this point. (Sync with Google Tasks to help get yourself set up, but then don’t bother syncing again. Google no longer really supports Google Tasks so it is best to just move on from it.)  Add the widget to a home page on your Android phone, if that is available to you. If you use Google Chrome as an internet browser (and why wouldn’t you?), download the Any.Do Chrome extension, and you might as well download the Any.Do desktop app as well. Now, you’re all set to get started.

Photo credit: Thom Weerd via Unsplashed

Organize Tasks

A good To-Do list doesn’t just tell you what needs to get done but also when. Any.Do organizes tasks into “Today”, “Tomorrow”, “Upcoming”, and “Someday”. Use these headings to your advantage when planning your day. Be realistic about what needs to happen sooner and what can be put off for later. To-Do lists get overwhelming when their tasks begin to pile up higher than the time available to complete them. The beautiful thing about Any.Do is that if you don’t finish everything on your “Today” list by the end of the day, it is automatically added to your following day’s list. No stress, no fuss.

Tasks can be dragged and dropped to their proper headings, or they can be scheduled using a calendar function. To schedule a task, click on the task and find the bell icon. Set the date and time when you need to do the task. From here, you can leave the reminder alarm on, turn it off, or be reminded a few minutes before the task needs to be done. Alarms are fairly non-intrusive and will show up as a pop-up notification on your phone, allowing you to mark it as complete or to put it off for a while right from the popup.

Recurring tasks

From the calendar function, you can also set repeating tasks. If there is something that you’ll be doing often, create a task on it, find the bell icon again, and click on “Only once”. A menu will pop up allowing you to repeat the task daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Give Your List a List

Sometimes, the thing a task really needs is its own list. When “Grocery Shop” and “Pack for trip” are on your To-Do list, the thing you really need is a grocery list and a packing list. When I found out that Any.Do let me do this, I was ecstatic. (By the way, did I mention that this blog post isn’t sponsored?). To create a sub-list, add your task, then find the note icon. You can add each list item as a separate note line, and they will list, allowing you to cross each item off when you’re done with it. And, if your family is anything like mine, the groceries are completed by whichever adult happens to have a free moment, so thankfully, Any.Do lets you share your lists too. Just click on the task again and find the person icon to share with your contacts.

Turn Email Into a Task

Remember how I shared my tips for keeping your email inbox clean? (Note to self: Add “clean up inbox” to To-Do list for this weekend). Well, I saved one of those tips for today. By downloading the Any.Do Extension for Chrome, your Gmail suddenly gains a whole new function. Tasks can be added to your list directly from your inbox. If you aren’t ready to reply to someone, you can give yourself a task to follow-up. If an email is asking for something, you can add that task to your To-Do list. And all of this can be done right from your email window, without clicking around to find your To-Do list.

Plan Your Day

Any.Do makes this easy by actually prompting you to plan each day, but it isn’t really bad advice whether you’re using a digital To-Do list or a paper To-Do list. The act of sitting down at the beginning or end of each day to take stock of the day, re-prioritize tasks, and cross off wayward completed items is a good way to avoid the lingering stress that uncompleted tasks tend to create.

Do you use any form of a To-Do list? What method do you find works best?