Pro To-Do List Tips

Your To-Do list transcends and fuses your personal, home and work life together. It is the foundation of your work and personal and family documentation. It drives how you run your life.

Mastering your To-Do list isn’t about having the fanciest system or churning out as many tasks as you possibly can. Your To-Do list is about having a system that works for you.

I am a To-Do List junkie – while I have still a lot to learn and a lot more to practice. I steal my To-Do list secrets from the pros. In this article, I have summarized the top 3 To-Do list systems out there. I personally use a combination (albeit conceptual) of these 3 systems, and recommend that you create your own permutation that works best for you.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done

David Allen is the guru on to-do list management. David Allen teaches about creating lists of all areas of your life to get the “inventory” of what is out there. David Allen helps solve the problem with traditional to-do lists where we don’t get to everything on our lists each day. David Allen teaches you to accept this as part of life. Our days are dynamic. Your boss comes into your office with an urgent request. Your kid gets sick. A potential client calls with a huge new opportunity. Your friend gives you tickets to the hockey game.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method is about running to lists and the ability to be adaptable. He doesn’t advocate sticking religiously to detailed plans each day (which sounds way more like reality to me). He teaches you to keep running to lists where you deal with tasks through a mix of the context, time and energy. If you have 10 minutes between meetings, you can call to book a haircut, but you wouldn’t call a client for a discussion you know could go on for a long time.

I struggled initially with how he doesn’t talk about priorities. David Allen believes anything that has your attention should be captured and dealt with in some manner no matter whether it is a “big thing” (e.g., buy a house, get a new job) or a “little thing” (e.g., buy a can opener, take the dog for a walk).

The more I matured, the more I realized that the GTD focus on the little things is brilliant. The little things in life like taking out the garbage, getting an oil change and making sure your kids brush their teeth are essential to the functioning of our lives and are even satisfying in many ways. The truth is that they do have our attention whether we track them well or not.

Also, the big things and little things in your life collide when we don’t expect them. Getting your oil changed may seem less important than calling back the President of your top client. But if your car breaks down on your way to meet your top client because you didn’t get your oil changed, then this will alter your concept of priority.

5 Top Things

5 Top Things is another approach I have garnered by a few experts in the to-do list space, specifically entrepreneur and speaker Andy Frisella who I heard at a conference. The approach is that you should put 5 Top Things on your list that you need to get done each day to advance your life.

Now here is the catch. The things you put on this list need to be things that you have to stretch yourself to do. They cannot be things that are in your routine, or things that you “feel” like doing.

• If you have fallen off the wagon when it comes to the gym and you need to push yourself to go, then put this on the list for that day.
• If you have to nudge yourself to make that important sales call, then do it.
• If you have procrastinated on a certain piece of work you know you should do, do it.
• If you need to have a difficult conversation with someone who works for you, put it on the list.

On the flip side, if you have a great eating or fitness routine, you don’t need to put this on the list. You focus only on areas where you really need to give yourself momentum or motivation.

Unlike Getting Things Done, this method is priorities-based. It forces you to think about what is most important for you that day for moving your life forward. It is also a process that makes you think about what systems in your life are working or not one day at a time.

Sacred Buckets

The Sacred Buckets method is about managing your day by sacred areas (or “buckets” as I say) of your life. This is one that most of us do naturally but usually not formally.

While I have heard a similar concept from gurus like Tony Robbins and Dr. Phil before, Karma Brown in her bestseller 4% Fix crystalizes the concept beautifully. She talks about a “Focused Four” which are her areas for generating her daily to-dos. Her personal key “buckets” are Health/Wellness, Creativity, Family, and Productivity. She attacks her to do list from picking from each bucket each day.

Your buckets are sections of your life that you have defined as what matters to you most. They are areas that you look at each day. Your buckets may be Spouse, Kids, Health, Job, Clients, Sales, Hobbies, Reading/Learning, Writing, etc.

We all have different buckets depending on what we do, what are goals are, and what stage of life we’re in. You may have 4 buckets, or you might have 3 or 2 or maybe 7. You can swap buckets in and out depending on what matters and what is going on throughout the year. (I used to have a Social Life and Volunteering bucket that have spilled over by the Kids and Work buckets.)

The beauty of buckets is that they are intentional. No matter how busy you are, you still control how you define your buckets and what size you make each bucket. They give context to your life, your problems, and your objectives. They are also tactical. They help you take your ethereal goals (like New Year’s Resolutions) and pull them into everyday planning.

Sacred Buckets give your day balance and saves you from dropping the balls in your life. If you are doing something in your key buckets each day, you are less likely to let your – relationship, kids, business, hobby, sales, customers, staff, volunteer work, etc. slide. For most of us, there is always more you could be doing for your job, clients, or career. Or maybe you have never-ending family issues. If that is you, the Sacred Buckets is perfect for giving all parts of your life attention, not just the squeakiest project, client, or family member.

What To-Do List method works for you? What doesn’t? Try them out and see!

Why do I love To-Do lists? To-Do lists are a foundational documentation practice. I am passionate about working with my clients to improve their documentation practices. This isn’t just a shelf exercise either. This is about practices (like To-Do lists) that drive action. If your organization is looking to improve your documentation practices or if you have any questions for me, please reach out to me at [email protected].