Making the Most of Your Task List

To keep all those new year’s resolutions, one needs a method of keeping track and monitoring the completion of the action items needed to make them happen.

If you’re like most people, you probably put those items into a list with the full intention of checking them off one-by-one as they are achieved. A noble goal. Unfortunately, this tends to fall apart as the year progresses, as you get overwhelmed by daily life, or for various other reasons that I’m sure you’re making up right now.

One way to stay on top of your resolutions is to make your task list work smarter for you. Here’s how.

The Tools

I’m sure you already have a tool for managing your task list. But if you’re looking for something better, here’s what I suggest you should look for:

• The system should let you access, and manage your tasks from wherever you are. Whether you’re in front of your computer or in a restaurant holding your iPhone or BlackBerry, having a list of things that you can do accessible at all times allows you to make the most efficient use of your time.
• The system should also make it really easy to get new tasks entered into it. Put another way, the faster you can get that thing you just remembered you had to do out of your head and into the tool, the sooner you will be less stressed about it. (That stress, by the way, exists because it’s unlikely you’re able to do anything about that thing at the moment, anyway.)
• The system should allow you to categorize stuff. I talk about why and how, later.

Most people I know use Outlook to manage their tasks. If you spend your work day in Outlook, and have a BlackBerry that synchronizes to it, then you’re set — your lists are always at your side. Personally, I make use of a really flexible system for tracking my tasks, called Remember the Milk. Here I talk a little about Remember the Milk, but the methodology that I discuss can apply to other systems, as well.

Remember the Milk

At its core, Remember the Milk (RTM) is essentially a TO-DO list, on steroids.

For the low price of zero dollars, you can sign up for an account that gives you access to a web version. However, for the totally-worth-it small price of $15/year, you can upgrade to a Pro account, which allows you to synchronize RTM with your BlackBerry’s Tasks application. If you’re an iPhone/iPod Touch user, you also get access to the awesome RTM app.

Aside from just logging in to the application, Remember the Milk provides a really easy to create new tasks (or lists of tasks): Once you’re signed up, every time you think of a task you can send a simple email to a special email address; you can even optionally add special keywords (like tags) that automatically categorize the task, and put a due date on it. I use this feature all the time — it’s a lot faster than, say, opening the BlackBerry Tasks application, selecting New, selecting a due date, and then selecting a Category for it!

Lastly, RTM lets you create any number of task lists. I use these as categories, and describe the ones I’ve created, later on.

An Inbox for Tasks

A concept that RTM introduces to the run-of-the-mill task list is that of an Inbox. This works similar to your email inbox: It serves as a collection point for new items, that you can later categorize. If you have to think about what bucket to put a task in up front, you’ll be less inclined to write it down. So, an inbox lets you get stuff into your system right away, leaving the worring about the “when” and “how” the task will get done, until later. Yes, the idea took me a little while to get used to, but now I wonder how I managed without it.

Categorizing

What categories work well? Here are the lists I created in RTM to categorize my tasks, which are adapted from David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”:

• Next Actions: This list is for action items that I can do right away (well, any time soon that I have the time to do them, that is).
• Projects: A “project” is anything that takes more than one action item to complete. Most of my New Year’s Resolutions are on this list.
• Someday/Maybe: A lot of items that usually come about due to wishful thinking get put in this list.
• Waiting For: Anything that requires delegation, requiring somebody else to do something for me. I write these down like this: “Person re: Thing-I’m-Waiting-For – DAY/MONTH”. The date helps me remember when I made the request to that person. For example, “Steve re: Sample Document – 1/13″.

The success of this system requires frequent review, which I do on a weekly, if not semi-daily basis. Part of this process involves:

1. going through the task Inbox and putting each task in one of these lists;
2. re-evaluating what’s in my “Next Actions” list (which frequently means re-wording them to be more specific, or moving them into “Someday/Maybe”);
3. reviewing my “Projects” list and confirming that I have at least one Next Action for each; and
4. ensuring that I’m following up with everybody in my “Waiting For” list.

For more about the “Getting Things Done” methodology, check out this summary I wrote up a while ago.

Personal or Business?

After reviewing the list of categories above, you might be wondering: That’s all well and nice, but how do I keep my business tasks and my personal tasks separate?

My approach? I combine them.

What you choose to accomplish in your Next Actions depends on the context: For example, if I have five minutes to spare before my next meeting, I can book an appointment to get my car’s tires changed just by virtue of the fact that I’m near a phone.

If you wish, however, you can further “tag” items in your task lists, regardless of what category they fall in. This way you can search across all of your lists for action items marked “Personal” and/or “@Phone”, for example.

Other Lists

Task lists are great for keeping track of more than just tasks. Here are some ideas of other lists that I maintain and add to, year-round. (I add a special character “~” before each of these list names to keep them visually seperate from the core lists I mentioned above.)

• ~Cooking: This is a list of dishes I like to cook frequently (as well as things to try), along with recipes in the notes section, just in case I need a reminder at the grocery store.
• ~Gifts: I add to this list all the time as I think of ideas of things to buy other people for birthdays, or Christmas.
• ~Groceries: As I run out of things in the kitchen, I send myself a quick email to my RTM account (“Bananas #Groceries”). At the store I easily check things off my list; I can even look at the list of completed tasks for ideas for other things to buy.
• ~ToRead: List of books, or articles to read. When I’m in the book store I’m not aimlessly wondering about.
• ~ToWatch: List of movies, or shows to watch. Handy when I find myself in iTunes, looking to be entertained.
• ~Wishlist: Ideas of things that I want for myself. Also handy when somebody is looking for gift ideas from me.

Your Next Action

While I may not have helped you get closer to achieving your resolutions, at the very least I hope this makes you rethink what you might have previously thought of as “the simple task list”. Check out Remember the Milk, and/or drop me a line so I can help you get the most out of your task list!