The blog

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

An enor­mous amount of tasks

But, a side effect is that you end up hav­ing a very long list since you most like­ly have a lot to do. Since you prob­a­bly have to look through the list sev­er­al times every day to decide what the right task to do next is, there is a def­i­nite risk of feel­ing over­whelmed every time you take it out and see all your tasks at once in a seem­ing­ly end­less and over­whelm­ing­ly long list.

The cathar­sis of categorizing

How­ev­er, there is a way to ensure you do not have to suf­fer through this uncom­fort­able moment over and over again. If you divide the list into sev­er­al parts, thus mak­ing sure you nev­er real­ly see the list in its entire­ty, you can choose the next task from one cat­e­go­ry at a time. You will only view part of the list instead of absolute­ly every­thing and the exten­sive list of things to do will sud­den­ly feel more man­age­able and doable.

But what cat­e­gories should you divide the list into? Well, it depends on what cri­te­ria you would base your choice of the next task to do on. This is of vital impor­tance. But let it be said that if you would nev­er choose a task based on any cat­e­go­ry what­so­ev­er, then there is no need to use cat­e­gories at all — so do not cat­e­go­rize your list just for the sake of it.

A few com­mon cat­e­gories peo­ple I meet use are:

• How long the task takes to com­plete. I cat­e­go­rize my tasks by 5‑, 15‑, 30- and 60 min­utes, accord­ing to how long they will take me to do. When I want to com­plete a few quick tasks I let the list show me only today’s 5‑minute tasks.
• Who you are depen­dent on to do the task. When you have a cer­tain per­son close at hand, you can let the list show you only the tasks for which you need this person’s help.
• What larg­er task, errand, work­group, or project the task belongs to or is a part of. Some­times you just want to get as much as pos­si­ble done on a par­tic­u­lar project or task you share with a spe­cif­ic work­group, and when that is the case, you would choose to view only these tasks from the list.
• What client or cus­tomer the task is for. If you want to only do things you have promised a cer­tain client for the next hour, you let the list show you only tasks con­cerned with this com­pa­ny or person.
• Where you need to be to do the task. It can be by your desk, in a cer­tain meet­ing forum, at the lab, in the C‑building (where the peo­ple you need to dis­cuss with are sit­ting), at your office in anoth­er city, at a client’s office, in the car, and so on.
• Under which cir­cum­stances you need to be in order to do the task. If you have a sta­ble inter­net con­nec­tion you could choose to do tasks in the cat­e­go­ry ​”Inter­net”. If the con­nec­tion is shaky at the moment for some rea­son, you could choose to do tasks for which you only need your ​”Com­put­er” (since you have it with you and can use it regard­less if you have a con­nec­tion or not). If you need to be left undis­turbed to con­cen­trate and get a com­pli­cat­ed task done, you choose to only view tasks cat­e­go­rized as ​”Undis­turbed” when the oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es for a few hours of peace and quiet.
• What pri­or­i­ty the task has. The tasks that con­tribute to your goals are the most impor­tant ones. If you want to do the tasks with the high­est pri­or­i­ty today, you will view only the tasks that are due today and which are also cat­e­go­rized as ​”Impor­tant”.
• If the task is dif­fi­cult or easy, fun o,r bor­ing. On a ​”bad day”, you might want to do what comes rel­a­tive­ly easy or which is more fun, and when you are on a roll you can take on the more chal­leng­ing tasks.
• What time of day that is most suit­able for doing the task. Some things are for some rea­son more suit­ed for doing in the morn­ings while oth­ers are per­fect for late in the afternoon.

Do this

If you want to divide your list into cat­e­gories so that you nev­er have to view it in its slight­ly daunt­ing entire­ty, then do this:

1. If you have nev­er used cat­e­gories before, choose only one way to cat­e­go­rize to begin with and thus make it eas­i­er for your­self to get going. Try one of the sug­ges­tions above.
2. Fig­ure out how you cre­ate cat­e­gories in the to-do-list tool you use. If you use Outlook’s Tasks you can sim­ply use the Cat­e­gories-func­tion. If you have Microsoft’s To-Do or Wun­derlist as your tool, you will use hash­tags to cat­e­go­rize tasks. In oth­er tools, they might refer to tags or labels. If your list is man­u­al and on paper you might try using dif­fer­ent col­ors, draw sym­bols or divide the list into tabs or columns to cre­ate categories.
3. Now cat­e­go­rize all your tasks.
4. For the next few days, prac­tice choos­ing tasks based on the cat­e­gories you have selected.
5. After a few days, reflect on how well it has worked out for you so far. Do you need more cat­e­gories? Or oth­er cat­e­gories than those you orig­i­nal­ly chose?

Exact and easy

If you cat­e­go­rize your to-do-tasks you will not have to see the entire and exten­sive list all the time which will make it much eas­i­er to actu­al­ly gath­er all tasks into a sin­gle place. You will choose what to do next faster and chances are you will choose the right task to do instead of the one that just hap­pened to stand out to you or was first on the list. And, as a result, you will end up get­ting the right things done easier.

What is your way?

Have you cat­e­go­rized your to-do-tasks in some oth­er way or by using oth­er cat­e­gories than those men­tioned here? Feel free to write me to share your thoughts.

(By the way, don’t mix ideas and to-do-tasks on the same list!)