Keeping a Very Short Daily Tasks List
One time-tested, popular and proven tool that caused me to struggle with my productivity for years is the daily tasks list. As a practitioner of the Getting Things Done methodology, the use of a traditional daily task list is discouraged. After years of using the ABC-123 daily tasks list, it proved very difficult to let go of, even though GTD replaced every other part of my old workflow quite easily!
In his most recent newsletter, David Allen outlines three key practices for managing your workload and staying on top of your game:
1) Make decisions about what we are going to do with our “stuff”
2) Put those outcomes and actions down in written form
3) Look at the reminders
This last step is where I would get stuck, largely because I would prepare a lengthy daily tasks list each morning. Instead of looking over the reminders throughout the work day to decide the next best action, I would work from the task list. The situation would become worse because, as items came in through the day, I would just add them to the task list in front of me. The problem with this is that only the “latest and loudest” get worked on and you keep stuffing things into your reminder lists, but never get to them. Or you only get to them once they’ve become crisis.
What I’ve learned to do is keep my daily task list very short. I do this by scanning my calendar and reminder lists in the morning, noting ONLY items that absolutely have to be done that day. That is to say, calendar items and reminders that actually have a date on them. This list needs to be very short! If I have more than about 4 items on this list, I try to renegotiate a deadline or see if I can defer a task to another date.
The point is not to only do four tasks a day. The point is that you want to get to all those task reminders on your lists. What I have found is that, counterintuitively, the shorter this daily list is, the more I get done. More importantly, more of the right things get done.
