The blog

A cen­tral part of a well struc­tured, per­son­al work rou­tine set­up is a to-do list.

By that, I mean a list that you use over a long peri­od of time, rather than write a new list every morn­ing. A gath­ered list over all that you have to do, dis­tinct­ly defined and with tasks that are ade­quate in size, gives you an easy and quick overview over what tasks you are respon­si­ble for. 

That makes it pos­si­ble for you to con­cen­trate on your cur­rent task with­out mean­while keep­ing sev­er­al oth­er tasks in your mind. Besides, it will give you a kick of sat­is­fac­tion every time you will be able to check off some­thing on your list.

But in what for­mat should you keep the to-do list? Well, that is a mat­ter of taste. Here are six suggestions:

1. The ​“Tasks”-function in Out­look

   Our most com­mon e‑mail appli­ca­tions all have con­ve­nient func­tions for han­dling to-do-lists. If a large part of your work­day is spent by the com­put­er this is an excel­lent alter­na­tive. It is easy to cat­e­go­rize the tasks by con­text, cus­tomer or project. It is also easy to sort them any­way you want to. You are able to add a due date and be remind­ed when you will have to start with the task.
   

   If you have a smart­phone you can syn­chro­nize it with your desk­top (depend­ing on your com­bi­na­tion of phone and e‑mail appli­ca­tion, though) and in that way you will be able to car­ry the list with you when you are out of the office.

2. Web ser­vice

   If you are a fan of web based solu­tions (maybe you use Gmail for e‑mail) there are a num­ber of web ser­vices to choose from. The one I am most impressed by at the moment is Todoist​.com. There, you can keep your lists task by task in a very clean and min­i­mal­is­tic fash­ion, and check them off as you com­plete them one by one through­out the day.
   
   One of the ben­e­fits of the web ser­vice is that your list is reach­able wher­ev­er you are con­nect­ed to the Inter­net. In addi­tion to that, you can con­nect to your list through your phone if it is web enabled.
   

3. Spread­sheet

   Excel or any oth­er spread­sheet appli­ca­tion are great alter­na­tives if you would pre­fer your list dig­i­tal. Here also, it is easy to cat­e­go­rize, sort and choose to see only those tasks that are of inter­est at this par­tic­u­lar moment.

4. Ded­i­cat­ed applications

   Today, there are ver­i­ta­ble heaps of appli­ca­tions whose sole pur­pose is to help you keep track of every­thing you do and make sure that you are mak­ing progress toward your long term goals. If you are a Mac user, I real­ly rec­om­mend ​“Things” from Cul­tured Code that con­tains all the func­tions you need, and in a very aes­thet­ic way.

5. Pen and paper (such as a notepad)

   But, there are solu­tions not based in elec­tron­ics and com­put­ers. Pen and paper still have some large ben­e­fits. They demand no time to start, there are no bat­ter­ies that may run out and they will not break if you drop them. 
   
   

   Maybe you pre­fer your list on sin­gle sheets where every sheet rep­re­sents a cer­tain con­text in which you need to be to be able to com­plete the task. Then it is easy to design tem­plates on your com­put­er and print them out. Then, the A4-sheets can be equipped with lines and columns for dead­lines, cat­e­go­riza­tion by cus­tomer or project etcetera.
   

   Would you rather pre­fer a notepad that you always bring to meet­ings, make sure you are strict about what you write in it. Is it for keep­ing your to-dos, fill it with to-do-tasks – page up and page down. Do not mix the tasks with ran­dom scrib­blings, phone num­bers or thoughts that we usu­al­ly use our notepads for. Why? Because, since you often every day need to decide what is the right task to do right now, you will be dis­tract­ed if you have to browse through the notepad hunt­ing for tasks hid­den among oth­er text.

6. Index cards

   Last but not least there is the stack of index cards, sized as play­ing cards, made famous by Mer­lin Mann as ​“the Hip­ster PDA”. In my ver­sion, they are pre-print­ed with ded­i­cat­ed space for cos­tumer- or project-cat­e­go­riza­tion, the tasks in ques­tion and con­text. A doc­u­ment clip holds the cards togeth­er in a neat stack of, say ten-fif­teen at a time.
   
   They are easy to write tasks on, portable, easy to access and demand no time to start.