To Do Lists - Love and Hate

I love lists. I hate lists. As long as I can remember, I've made lists. Things to pick up the grocery store. Homework. Projects for the house. Music I want to buy. Music I've already bought, so I don't buy it again accidentally. Addresses and birthday. I have a folder in my Google drive, called Lists, in which I've actually gone to the trouble of storing some of these lists because there are so damn many of them. I wish I were kidding. I can't begin to imagine how much of my life has been spent on making lists, editing lists, rewriting lists, trying to remember the things that should be on the lists, and checking things off the lists. I measure productivity in the number of things I can check off of my various lists of action items, but we'll talk more about that later. For now, the art of lists is the focus. We'll begin with the basics. Lists can keep us on track. How granular you decide to get with your lists, and how you decide to manage them, is completely a matter of personal preference. Myself, I like to be able to access my lists at all times. I have an app, Wunderlist, that is also available in a web-based format. So in addition to being able to access the app on my phone and iPad, I can use either my work computer or one of my personal computers to access the lists. Often, on the weekends, I'll simply place my iPad on the kitchen table and open up the app from time to time to keep myself on track. The good thing about this system? It is accessible with any device. The bad thing about this system? It is accessible with any device. I have two problems that I deal with regularly as a result of having lists accessible in this manner. First, I'm ALWAYS messing with them. I'm always looking at them, adding things, moving things around, creating subcategories, and generally creating more and more work for myself. Second, and part of a larger problem I deal with on a regular basis, is that I'm always plugged in. Sure, I can print these lists out if I want and cross things off or add them manually to a piece of paper, but then I've got to turn around and edit the Wunderlist versions of these lists at some point. So that duplicates effort. But in order to NOT duplicate effort, I'm always plugged in. And I don't like that. I have a hard enough time dealing with distractions and time-wasters. Just having to use a device of some sort to access a to do list allows the appeal of wasting time to creep in. It is so easy to click over to Facebook, or YouTube, or to check email, and then to wonder 15 minutes or a half hour later how that happened. Where that time magically went. So I've gone the other route, and I've used a multi-section notebook with tear-out pages, so I can scribble through things as I complete them and add to them without having to worry about accessing an app. Is this better? For me, it turns out, definitely not. And it is actually a fairly silly reason that is specific to me but others might find it aligns with their preference as well. I like to be able to re-order things, and I want to be able to consolidate the lists to one page. The problem with having manual lists is that, in order to realign them, you have to rewrite them. If you have old tasks that aren't completed yet but you run out of room, you start a new page. Your options at that point are to transfer all the 'dangling' items on the original page onto the new page, or to simply keep that old page. To me, that's clutter. That doesn't work. Not only is it not visually appealing, but it lacks the concise and streamlined format I need in order to be able to grasp how much I'm actually trying to accomplish - the scope of the list in question. I don't want to have to go flipping through pages and subtotaling items in my head in order to figure out how many items really live on a list. That just doesn't work. So where am I going with all of this? Good question. A good system needs to be finite and manageable. Every individual will decide what works best for him and her, and in what format. The most important thing I've found in creating my lists is in being able to get information down as quickly as possible when it enters my head, and I don't want to have to worry about categorizing it or prioritizing it at the time I'm thinking about it. I want a system that allows me to have a general area in which I can get ideas down along with corresponding details, then move on to the next thing. Often my thinking when I am in brainstorming mode is linear so one idea begets another similar idea in a similar direction. Many times, though, thoughts trigger other thoughts that are a move in a completely different direction. And that's ok, because I'm using a parking lot method to try to get everything down on one list and worry about finding homes for things later. If I'm already on one of my lists capturing info and I have a thought for a different list, it takes me out of the action. I have to think about where that thing should live, find the list (or God forbid create the list if it doesn't exist) and then I'm off in a different direction with the daunting task of trying to find my original train of thought once I'm done. In addition to being able to get things down quickly and easily, I also need to have action-oriented lists. These come down to two main categories at this point - business and personal. Personal lists are the things I do when I'm not at work, and business lists are the things I do when I'm at work. One could also look at it as business and EVERYTHING ELSE but that gets a bit overwhelming if one looks at the personal side of that scale. For keeping things streamlined and allowing me to focus on the task at hand, this system works best for me. You might have other categories you want to add in for your action-oriented lists. School, for example. How many you have is up to you, but what we mean by an action list is simply a group of tasks that are associated with a particular set of responsibilities. In the case of work, I have a daily to do list, a list of long term tasks, and a list of projects I am tracking that have been delegated to others. When I get to work I can open up my daily to do list and add to or subtract from it as needed. I can move things between the daily list and my long term list or my delegated projects. I can, in turn, move things from these other areas onto my daily lists. It is a system that works because it allows me to keep track of and prioritize everything I need to do, and only those things that I'm trying to accomplish while I'm at work. My personal lists are set up a bit differently. In terms of action lists I have a daily list and a weekend list. The weekend list is evaluated throughout the week based on what I can or can't complete on a daily basis, along with any long-term projects I want to begin to prioritize. From there, my lists are no longer action lists. Everything essentially falls into a wishlist category. House projects, topics and ideas I'd like to write about, business ideas, personal projects I'd like to research and/or undertake. Those sorts of things. Grocery shopping is technically a category that functions in a similar manner. We add things to this list because we want to be able to refer back to them. This list is informational, not really action-oriented. Grocery shopping is an action that would end up on an action-oriented list. But does it? No. Interestingly, grocery shopping never makes it anywhere onto any of my personal action-oriented lists. This isn't because it is something I don't do but on the contrary it is something I do so regularly I don't really need to keep track of it. Exercise is another thing. Mowing the lawn is another. These things just fit into our lives at regular enough intervals that we aren't necessarily compelled to keep track of them. The problem with keeping track of them is that they would begin to clog up our lists and we'd lack as much opportunity to prioritize the things that we are truly trying to track on our lists. Because at what point would these regular routines end? Would 'brush teeth' need to be on the lists? How about 'drive to work?' How about 'eat lunch?' For some, perhaps. But the idea is to try to keep our lists manageable. Now I'd like to close with some thoughts on the idea of 'manageable.' This is going to be a topic that we can spend plenty of time on in and of itself, but it is important to consider 'manageable' in the context of deciding how to organize these lists. Each action-oriented list should have a finite number of tasks. You need to decide what you can reasonably handle in a day. This means examining how these things are going to be completed in the context of everything else that needs to be accomplished in that business time period. This means looking at your calendar and discounting the time you're going to be spending in meetings or working on specific things. Sometimes it even means scheduling deliberate time to work on the things on your to do list. But there are a finite number of things that should be on the lists lest they become overwhelming. My magic number seems to float between 5 and 10. Anything more than 10 and I begin to lose track of the scope of the work. I lack the ability to prioritize these items because too many balls are in the air. This isn't to say that when item 11 comes along I just ignore it and don't write it down. My long term list is where it lands, so I can refer to the long term list once I dip below 10 (or to whatever reasonable amount constitutes my cap) and evaluate what should be moved onto the action list. So that's basically how lists work for me. I enjoy making lists, particularly ones that are inventories of collections. It doesn't cost anything other than time to make these lists, and they can be useful in tracking what I have and don't have. Tools, for example, and the different socket sizes I have. I want to know what I'm missing in the event that I need a particular size of something. I want to know what I have so I don't duplicate a purchase. Simple as that. Comic books, fiction, music. Things like that are fun to write down in list format and establish categories for, and for me that task is recreation. It is relaxation time. Logging and categorizing. But it has its place. Those lists are a very separate thing from my action-oriented items because when I'm trying to stay on task I need to be able to focus only on the things that are appropriate for me to focus on at that particular time. So goes my love/hate relationship with lists.