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

How does every­thing fit together?

The tool may seem com­plex, and since it’s new to you, you may not know how the var­i­ous com­po­nents relate. How do you prop­er­ly fit your work in there?

Approach it method­i­cal­ly, step by step. I’ll guide you through the first part so you can get started.

Do this

1. Not many peo­ple do it, but I rec­om­mend watch­ing any ​”get­ting start­ed” videos in the new tool. They may feel repet­i­tive when you’re eager to start, but it will save you a lot of time and trou­ble to go through such a ​“guid­ed tour.”
2. Enter as many tasks as you can from oth­er places where you’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten down what you need to do. You need data to work with to see ​“how it will turn out” when you build the struc­ture. Be sure to cap­ture tasks from all their exist­ing places — even the unspo­ken ones. Some that are eas­i­ly for­got­ten are:
   • open tabs in your brows­er that you don’t want to close because you need to remem­ber to go back and do something
   • chat mes­sages, you need to go back to where you’re asked to do some­thing or where you say you’ll do something
   • a text mes­sage, among many others
3. Cre­ate labels, cat­e­gories, or tags (depend­ing on what your tool calls them) for the prop­er­ties you want to use for select­ing from the list occa­sion­al­ly. For exam­ple, ​”I want to see all the short tasks,” ​”I want to see the tasks I can do when this per­son is avail­able,” or ​“I want to see all the tasks I can do in the morning.”
4. Group the tasks based on the larg­er task or project they are part of — often by plac­ing them in dif­fer­ent ​“sub-lists” in your (now!) only to-do list tool.
5. Only set a deadline/​due date when you have a def­i­nite one. Don’t guess.

This isn’t every­thing, but it’s a start!

Steady into the new

If you take these steps, you’ll have made a good start with your new dig­i­tal list tool. You’ll take a big step into the new, which increas­es the chances of suc­cess com­pared to just try­ing out adding a few tasks to see ​“how it works.”

How did you do it?

How did you go about start­ing a new to-do list tool last time? What worked well for you? Write to me and let me know. I want to hear about your experiences. 

(What to know how I work? Check out how I have organ­ised my to-do list!)