A to-do list seems like one of those things that almost everyone on the planet has, whether it’s an old-school list written by hand in a paper notebook or some sort of app.
Personally, however, I don’t have any sort of conventional to-do list. Instead, for decades now, I’ve had a habit of using a calendar as my to-do list, and here are reasons why you might want to try that too…
When it comes to task management and to-do lists, there are literally dozens of different systems. Getting Things Done, Bullet Journal, PARA, Eisenhower Matrix, Ivy Lee, Eat the Frog, MITs, MoSCoW, 1-3-5, Kanban… I could go on.
I’m a systems guy: organizing things is basically a hobby for me. I could absolutely go down any of these rabbit holes and try to organize my life in any of these ways. Instead, however, I developed a simple but very effective approach a long time ago that I have used ever since.
This happened after I was looking at a very long series of categorized to-do lists and wondering when the hell I was actually going to be able to complete them. I decided the solution was to look at them in order of priority, determine approximately how long each item was going to take, and then schedule each item into my calendar.
This approach achieved two results. First, the things I really needed to do were scheduled and then done. Second, I saw how unrealistic it was to complete every item on my lists, so I was forced to remove the ones that just weren’t going to happen.
After that, I decided to cut out the middleman and just schedule each task as soon as I came up with it. In other words, I decide when I’m going to do it and I schedule it in my calendar for that time slot. I have been using this system ever since and highly recommend it.
Of course, life doesn’t go perfectly as planned, so sometimes I need to reschedule things, but it’s just a matter of dragging an item from one time slot or day to another.
I also use a series of color-coded calendars to give me a visual overview of my day, week, or month. I’ve written about this before, so you can read more here.
Here are all the reasons why I would recommend trying this system…
Urgent and high priority tasks are handled quickly
I do not depend on color coding, exclamation points, priority codes, or anything else to indicate that an item is urgent or high priority. I’m just attributing these to an early time slot.
Other tasks are also performed reliably
Less urgent or important tasks may be assigned later time slots, but they are always assigned a time and date. This means that items don’t just languish somewhere on a dusty list, but actually appear as calendar alerts at a time that isn’t assigned to anything else.
My to-do list remains realistic
I think we all have that fantastic self that can leap through large to-do lists in a single bound. The reality, however, is that we are all mortal and have a limited amount of time to accomplish our things. Since nothing can be added to my to-do list without having a time slot in which I intend to do it, it makes it much harder for me to push myself.
I can monitor my life balance
People talk about work-life balance, but I think there are many ways we can unbalance our lives. Are we spending enough time on our passion projects? Personal, physical and mental development? Contribute to our communities? Are you having fun?
Using color-coded calendars and viewing all time expenses in one place provides a simple visual overview of that balance.
Integration with the Reminders app
The Reminders app plays a small role in all of this for me. If I’m in bed or on the go and suddenly remember something I need to do, I’ll ask Siri to set a reminder for a specific time the next day. The reminder will now appear in my calendar in this time slot exactly as if I had scheduled it manually.
What is your approach to managing your projects and your life? Share in the comments.
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