I Don't Have a To-Do List

With the end of the semester and the mountain of wrap-up that goes with it, I have had overwhelm on my mind more than ever. Last week I wrote about my top tips for managing email overwhelm. Now I want to turn to another big overwhelm trap: the master to-do list. But surprise! I actually don’t keep a master to-do list. Instead, I use my calendar, and I have a wish list on the side.

Why not use a traditional to-do list?

A traditional to-do list is basically a brain dump of all the things you want to do, with no regard for the likelihood you will be able to do them, the time they will take, or the cost involved. You can sort that list in any number of ways to focus it by priority, urgency, time needed, deadline, category, type of responsibility, and more. But it still stays a really giant list, and in my experience, nothing triggers overwhelm like a giant list.

This where my two-part system has saved me. My concrete to-dos, those in my first quadrant, go right on my calendar. Anything else—things I’d like to do one day, ideas I have, anything that falls in my other quadrants—goes on my wish list. This way I can stay focused on what actually needs to be done, and I can periodically check in on my wish list to see if anything needs to bumped up to a calendar item.

It’s About Time Realism

The best and biggest reason I use my calendar this way is that it forces me to be real about time. In times past when I used the classic to-do list, time felt infinite and the number of things I could do felt infinite. I could put anything I wanted on that list. I never thought about it meeting reality. And unfortunately it led me straight into terrible overwhelm!

Time realism is an overwhelmed overachiever’s best friend. Maybe an uneasy best friend, because we hate the voice that reminds us we can’t do everything we dream of. (Actually I think can do all we dream of, just maybe not in the exact way we might envision at first.) But when simple daily living is exhausting because of all we’ve taken on or want to accomplish, time realism is our best friend. It’s not easy work, and I frankly HATE having to be real about time. It can leave me feeling trapped. But more on that in another blog.

To short-circuit this overwhelm and harness the power of time realism, I put to-dos right on my calendar, in a time block. By seeing what I’ve scheduled in my day, visually color-blocked on my calendar, I can see how much time I have open and what I’ve committed to. I have to choose among the options and stay grounded in the reality of having 24 hours in a day to get things done.

And as I learn how long my recurring tasks take—an hour for my wake-up routine, 45 minutes for a grocery store pickup, two hours to draft and send my monthly newsletter—I can get more precise over time about how much I can expect to get done in a day. I can also more easily decide if I want a more crowded, faster-paced day, or a calmer, less-hurried feel. And if my day doesn’t go to plan and I can’t get everything done? I just drag the calendar item over to another time or day. Super easy.

Extra Benefits

This method also offers a few extra benefits.

• I only have to look one place for my to dos. I know all the things that need to get done are captured in one place. No rustling around on my desk or on my phone or laptop to find e-lists and scraps of paper.

• It keeps reinforcing and building my skills in time realism.

• I have a built in record of when I’ve done things. When did I last see the eye doctor? When did I last change the furnace air filter? When do I need to order a birthday present for my nephew? It’s all on the calendar.

• It’s dead simple to set recurring to dos and reminders.

Practical Implementation Tips

If you want to try this method for yourself, here are a few of my top tips to make it work.

• Give yourself time to learn how long your to-dos take. You’ll need time to learn how long your tasks take, especially if you are doing one for the first time. And if you have to complete a task when you’re not at peak energy, or you have a bad day and just need to throw in the towel, your time needs can really change. All this is perfectly OK and normal, though. Just keep learning and keep rolling with it. Calculate an average of time if you need to, and plan some buffer time in between tasks.

• To-dos can stack up. Lord knows I always put way too much on my calendar. I have ambitions that far outstrip the actual time available on this existential plane. In general I try to be disciplined about not stacking too many to-dos on top of each other. If I see those boxes starting to overlap and I can’t even see the text in them anymore, I know I’ve gone too far. And then I just move things around (or delete or downsize if I can) to distribute them more evenly. I employ my GPS system to make this easier.

• How to handle to-dos with or without a deadline. When I identify a new to-do or meeting or obligation, I put it right on my calendar. If it has a firm deadline, but I’m still not sure when l get to it, I’ll put “DUE 7/1” (whatever the date is) at the start of the calendar item description; then I can shift it around as needed and not worry I’m forgetting an important deadline. If I’m not sure when it needs to be done, I’ll make my best guess and tentatively schedule it.

• You might forget to move undone tasks forward. When I was first developing and using my system, some to-dos fell off my radar because I wouldn’t get to everything I’d scheduled for the day and I would forget to move them forward. I did two things to address this. First, at the end of each work day, I do a quick update of that day’s calendar and whatever I didn’t get done I move forward. I also have a recurring calendar item on Mondays to move any undone items from the past few days. Easy!

• Cut yourself some slack. For those of us who face OCD, perfectionism, and similar anxieties around things being done “perfectly” (I am in this category), part of our work is to stay mindful about the limits of any calendar or task management system. Life is gonna life. Even the best systems get bogged down sometimes. Maybe they even break briefly. It doesn’t mean your system is problematic. It means that usually the system is overloaded. Sound familiar? If you feel like your system is breaking down, take a few deep breaths first and just look at your calendar or to do system. Is it actually broken? Or does it just need a little TLC, a little updating? A system is a tool, an ecosystem, that sometimes needs maintenance. It’s not a perfectly running machine.

• Time blocking. If putting lots of small, specific tasks on your calendar makes it visually too busy and overwhelming, even if you’ve not planned too much for your day, consider putting a time block for the type of task and make a mini-list in the calendar item description so all you see is the time block type. Say, for example, you want to run a few errands. If putting each errand as its own calendar item feels too busy, put a block on your calendar named “Errands” and schedule for two hours, or however long you need. In the “Errands” calendar item, you can your list of get gas, go to the bank, drop off your dry cleaning, and pick up groceries.

To Conclude

If you’ve felt overwhelmed by your to-do list, try my calendar technique for yourself. Let me know in the comments here how it works for you!

Image by FiveFlowersForFamilyFirst from Pixabay.