The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

So what are they for?

As I see it, each of the three tools is best for this:

• OneNote: meet­ing notes and oth­er notes on things that are rel­e­vant to you now and that you may want to find at an indef­i­nite time in the future, because you can make very free notes and still orga­nize them in a struc­tured way.
  
• To-Do: your to-do list, because To-Do can col­lect all your to-do tasks, and has good con­nec­tions to Out­look, OneNote, Plan­ner, Teams chat, and oth­er tools in Microsoft 365.
  
• Plan­ner: the plan for every­thing each per­son in the work­group or the project has to do, because here you can get a clear overview of who is sup­posed to do what, when, and how far you have come on each major task.

That’s when things get messy

When you mix the uses of the three apps, you make things dif­fi­cult for your­self. For exam­ple, I see clients:

• writ­ing infor­ma­tion that they need to remem­ber but that should nev­er be ​“com­plet­ed” as a to-do task in To-Do. It could be some­thing like ​“for cus­tomer cat­e­go­ry A, apply dis­count terms B.” The prob­lem: Their to-do list then con­tains both tasks that need to be done and checked off, as well as things that don’t need to be done and should­n’t be checked off, but on the sur­face, they look like the same thing. Instead, use OneNote (or anoth­er place) for this type of information.
  
• writ­ing their to-do list on a page in OneNote. The prob­lem: Even though they can put a check­box before tasks in OneNote, the list quick­ly becomes unman­age­able. They see every­thing at once, but at the same time, it isn’t easy to sort it by pri­or­i­ty, dead­line, time con­sump­tion, or sim­i­lar. Use To-Do for your to-do list instead.
  
• keep­ing track of every­thing they have to do per­son­al­ly in Plan­ner. The prob­lem: Since the to-do list is prefer­ably com­plete and con­tains every­thing you have to do, the board quick­ly becomes over­whelm­ing if each task is added as a ​“card.” Or, it becomes dif­fi­cult to get an overview of all tasks if the cards instead rep­re­sent larg­er activ­i­ties or projects, and the actu­al to-do tasks are in check­lists on each card. Instead, try using To-Do for your to-do list.

Do this

1. If you rec­og­nize that you mix the uses of Plan­ner, OneNote, and To-Do, take some time to clar­i­fy what you use them for.
   
2. If you find ​“good to know” infor­ma­tion in To-Do, move it to OneNote.
   
3. If you find to-do tasks in meet­ing notes in OneNote, move them to To-Do or set an Out­look flag to auto­mat­i­cal­ly end up in To-Do (while remain­ing in the meet­ing notes in OneNote).
   
4. If you have to do tasks in check­lists in cards in Plan­ner, check to make sure they are also in To-Do or move them there, so you don’t have to do tasks in mul­ti­ple places and miss out on the excel­lent overview.

Less divi­sion leads to less hesitation

If you clar­i­fy what you use OneNote, Plan­ner, and To-Do for, you will have the right infor­ma­tion in the right place. In your to-do list, every­thing will be able to be checked off, and you won’t have to nav­i­gate around and ignore oth­er infor­ma­tion that’s there when you’re choos­ing which task to tack­le next.

When you need to write some­thing down, you no longer have to hes­i­tate about where to put it, but you can place it direct­ly where it belongs and quick­ly move on.

How do you do it?

Of the men­tioned apps, Plan­ner is used the least by the peo­ple I help. There­fore, if you do, I’m curi­ous to hear how you use it. Please email me and share your thoughts. 

(By the way, do you know that you can let the to-do-list write itself in Microsoft 365?)