Searching for The Ultimate To-Do

I’m a scatterbrain. I’m disorganized, and I’m easily distracted.?

Don’t get me wrong — I love structure. When I collaborate with other people I tend to be very organized, but when it’s only for myself. Chaos. Chaos and riddles. I’ve never managed to find a good system to keep track of personal tasks and todos, and believe me, I have tried.

I’ve tried so many different productivity tools. Currently, I’m scattered over Google Keep, Notion, Todoist, Google Spreadsheets, Asana, and good-old pen and paper. Actually several papers, a notepad, post-its, and a moleskin. Also, right now, I have one to-do list written on the back of an unopened envelope from Skatteverket. (don’t ask why, and yes I will open it later today).

My point is that I'm pretty disorganized when it comes to where I store my todos and ideas, and for the longest time I found this to be a problem, even embarrassing. But recently I've started to think about this from a different perspective. Maybe the reason I can't stick to one single to-do system is because… I don't have to ??

This might sound stupid, but hear me out. What I mean is, there’s no intrinsic value in having everything in the same system, and for some reason, I find that certain tasks fit better in Google Keep, while some fit in Notion, and others fit better on an… unopened envelope from Skatteverket….

After all, a to-do list is simply a parking space for ideas, it doesn’t matter where I park them, as long as I find them when they are needed. What matters at the end of the day is that I did what I said I would do.

To get things done, I find it more useful to have a good system for deciding /what/ to work on, rather than to focus on /where/ to write things down, and while my system for writing down todos might be seemingly senseless, I compensate by having a solid system for deciding what to work on.

How I prioritize my work

I'm almost always clear on what I need to work on, and I get there by simply asking myself two questions:

1. What brings you the most stress?
2. What are you most excited about?

I usually start with solving what brings me the most stress, like paying bills or solving bugs. Then I work on what brings me the most joy, like working on new projects and building new features. (This tends to create new issues that give me stress, rinse and repeat)

And to be honest, this system works really well.

So in the end, I might be a scatterbrain, and I might be disorganized when it comes to my to-do lists, but I know what I need to work on. I get shit done, and the people I work with find me dependable (which is nice...), so maybe it’s time to stop looking for “the ultimate to-do solution” and rest in the notion that my system, while it may look disorganized, works pretty well.

(Unless you have the ultimate to-do system, please let me know if you have the ultimate system ??)

To end this note, I'm going to follow the advice from a marketing guru who appeared in my YouTube feed. He said that to be viewed as an expert, you should name your systems, and I think I’d like to be viewed as an expert.

So here you have it:

THE DOPAMINE DO-LIST:

My 3-Step Framework?for Scatterbrains to Prioritize Effectively and Get Shit Done!

Step 1: What brings you the most stress? - Solve that.?

Step 2: What are you most excited about??- Do that.?

Step 0: Something on your mind? - Write it down somewhere, and solve it later.