Decent Little To-do List

Decent Little To-do List

A convenient tree-style to-do list. Fully customizable fonts, colors, and categories. Easy and convenient to use. Minimizes to a tray icon, and pops up with a shortcut key. The tree has any number of sub levels. 9 customizable color-coded categories. Import, export, print, and copy to plain text. Save and load color schemes and settings. This version is the first release on CNET Download.com.How effective is your to-do list? Does it help you plan your day? Does it nudge you to prioritize the right tasks? Or is it a never-ending list of things you feel guilty for not having done yet and now you’re not going to do any of them? A good to-do list should serve you. You should not be at its mercy. The best to-do lists set you off in the right direction each day and help you focus on the tasks that are most important. With the right strategies, a to-do list can help you achieve larger goals, too. Here’s what you need to know to make your to-do list work for you.Notice how I said “notebook?” While there are many benefits to putting your to-do list into an app (and I’ll list them in a moment), there is nothing wrong with paper! If paper works for you, great. Likewise, a simple spreadsheet or word processing document is fine, too. Use the tool that’s right for you.Digital to-do lists have several advantages over paper, however, and it’s good to at least know what they are, even if you end up using paper. Some advantages are:

• They’re easy to edit, which means you can update information quickly,
• They have built-in reminders,
• It’s very hard to lose them because the list itself is usually saved in the cloud,
• You can sort your tasks by priority, due date, or alphabetically, and
• You can assign tasks to other people and get notified when they complete them.If you are in the market for a to-do list app, which one is best? Having tested dozens of them, I tend to recommend Todoist, Asana, and Things more often than others. But there are many other options. OmniFocus is good for people who add a lot of detail to their tasks. Trello speaks to visually driven people. Microsoft To Do works well with Office and Windows 10. Google Tasks is great for its Google Workspace integration. Habitica might draw your attention if you like gamification. And so on.

You shouldn’t have just one to-do list. You should have a few lists that cover the major categories of your life, such as Work Tasks, Personal To-Dos, and Household Chores. Having more than one list helps you focus. When you’re at work, you don’t want to be distracted by your personal list. When you’re at home, you don’t want to be burdened thinking about your work responsibilities.Don’t hold back. Make lists for everything you think of! The useful ones will stick around. You can scrap any that end up not being useful to you.

Some other ideas are:

• Shopping,
• Someday (where you write down unimportant tasks that you might do someday),
• Weekend (for anything you want to do on the weekend but don’t want to be distracted by during the week), and
• Chores for Kids.Remember, you can add new lists or rename them at anIf your to-do app has a keyboard shortcut for adding a new task, learn it. If your app has a mobile phone shortcut, set it up.For those using paper, keep a bit of scrap paper near you while you work to jot down distracting thoughts quickly and then copy them into your official to-do lists when it’s convenient.First, most to-do apps let you see what’s due today, tomorrow, and later in the week, regardless of which list they’re in. This way, you can see everything due today and get a sense of how the day will go. You might also take a moment to reschedule some tasks if you’re feeling overwhelmed just looking at everything due within the next week.Second, by assigning due dates to your tasks, you’re effectively planning out your week, which is an excellent time-management strategy.For most people, I recommend starting out by limiting yourself to three to five tasks per day. It might not sound like a lot, but if you focus on writing down the three most important things you need to do today, you might find that’s already a lot to get through.Why not write down more? If you write down too many tasks and don’t get to them all, then you must defer them to another day. That means re-prioritizing and changing your list, which is unnecessary work that causes stress and can feel self-defeating.By having a small number of tasks, you’re more likely to finish them. The more you finish all your tasks, the better you’ll feel about your to-do lists overall. That positive feeling can fuel you going forward.Your three to five tasks should be important things that you must do. And no more than two of them should be routine tasks, like taking daily medication. Focus on your intention for the day. That’s what you should write down.Over time, track how many tasks you check off each day (the best to-do apps track it for you) and you’ll get a sense of the right number of tasks for you, in case it’s not three to five.What you write on your to-do list matters. Put tasks on your lists, rather than objectives and goals. To do that, you need to know the difference between them.Goals are big-picture achievements or desired outcomes. They’re usually difficult to quantify. An example is “become fluent in Hindi.” Putting that on your to-do list wouldn’t be very effective.In a perfect world, many of the tasks you get done each day will be in pursuit of a bigger goal. You should know what your goals are, but you don’t need to write them on your daily to-do list.Instead, write your goals and objectives somewhere else. It might still be in your to-do list app or notebook, but not on the list that you look at each day. Other places you can write down goals are your journal or a note-taking app.Refer to your goals from time to time. Check in on them and revise them. Just don’t let them distract you from the specific things you need to do todayA looked-at list is a used list. An effective to-do list guides you throughout your day, which means you need to look at it often. Look at it each morning to mentally prepare for the day ahead. Look at it after lunch so you know what else you need to focus on for the rest of the day. Revise it at the end of the day to reschedule tasks you missed.Make a habit of looking over everything you have planned for the coming week in advance so that you can better plan your time and make adjustments.During the day, if you start to feel lost in what you’re doing or need a break from it, look at your to-do list for something small and easy (a less demanding task that doesn’t require high focus) that you can tackle in the meantime.The more you look at your list, the more you’ll trust it. The more you trust it, the less you have to remember what tasks you must do. The less you have to remember, the more you free your mind to focus on the task at handUse tight language or shorthand to write your tasks. Many apps have priority ratings, stars, tags, and other details that you can add to important tasks to make them stand out. Color-code your tasks if that helps. Apply icons that give you more information about the task, such as whether it requires a phone call or is related to healthcare. No matter how quickly you look at your to-do list, you should be able to reap a lot of information about what needs to get doneNot everyone runs on lists. However, if you’re struggling to make sense of your goals, a list could save you time, energy, and the need to come up with excuses for when the thing that needs to happen, well, doesn’t.(If you have a word with Oskar Schindler, he’ll tell you that lists can also save lives.)List-making is pretty personal. Some people border on obsessive about them. Organizing the bathroom can turn into a session of ticking off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, rather than a freestyle shift-around between number 2s.Others prefer less to-doing and fro-ing. They’d rather wing it, writing important telephone numbers on the backs of their hands or sticking Post-its to their leg, “Memento”-style.However, even the most basic outline of the things you need to do can help you crush your goals and foes. Largely, your goals.For one thing, the act of writing out a list forces us to set concrete goals (To-do: “Take out the trash.”). This can be way more effective than thinking about vague objectives (To-don’t: Get cleaner).Plus, making a written list can help us remember important information (meaning that trash won’t sit in the kitchen for weeks, or that if it does, you won’t forget to charge it rent).Burack OR, et al. (1996). The effects of list-making on recall in young and elderly adultsThe problem is this: Not all lists are createdequal.Even those of us who have bumper stickers that read: “People who make to-do lists tick every box” might not know how to make a successful one. (That’s a terrible bumper sticker, BTW. If it’s real, and you actually have it, add “abandon your vehicle by the side of the road and set it aflame” to the very top of your to-do list.)Luckily we’re here to help, with a step-by-step guide to creating — and completing — an awesome list of stuff to get done.Why have one list when you can have… wait, more than one? What is this, Christmas?Create several lists of things that need to happen. Our suggestions would be:

•  This lays out your long-term goals. If you need to clean out your closet and whatever’s living in there, want to sign up for a language class, or need to move to a new apartment, jot it all down on your master list.
•  This should contain everything that needs to go down in the next 7 days. Maybe you need to research which language to learn or which area to start your apartment search. Throw it in here.
•  This bad boy lets you know about tasks that need doing pronto: Call Aunt Sue for her birthday, pick up the dry cleaning, or finish that presentation for work tomorrow.Every day, see which items from the master list and weekly project list should move to the HIT list. You’ll find that the big hitters from your master list start to play a more active role in your day-to-day.And who doesn’t enjoy rubbing shoulders with their ambitions? For more guidance on infusing your life with meaning, look no further.Each new day, a list of tasks awaits us. Some of them are more interesting than others. Nevertheless, the importance of completing these tasks is undisputed, especially if they build on a daily basis.Normally what happens is that we are either able to complete a preset number of tasks on time or we fail miserably. Although the success rate depends on many factors, there is one common thing that is mostly seen in several use cases. That would be the use of to-do list apps.There are so many of these so-called “best to-do list apps”, which claim to make your life easier.Although most of these apps stand up to the mark and can help to make things incredibly easy and organized, the criteria for their selection remains a puzzle.We decided to do an extensive round-up of best do to list apps. The content is lengthy, no doubt, but you will be able to select a handful of applications eventually. Take a look below and see which to-do list app piques your curiosity…