Clarifying To-dos to Unlock Your Full Potential

Clarity is what we desperately need in our to-do lists.

There was a time I didn’t particularly appreciate looking at my to-do list. It was a mess, and trying to untangle it increased my stress. It’s ironic when the purpose of to-do lists is to put order into chaos.

After a few years and a lot of retooling and restarting, I eventually found a balance of my list between being manageable and trustworthy.

Clarifying What Comes into a To-Do List

Building our list often becomes a mishmash of “stuff” rather than a list of things to do. The primary purpose of a to-do list is to record the actionable things you need to do.

It shouldn’t be on that list if it is not actionable. So you need to sort your stuff into two groups of info:

  • Actionable
  • Non-actionable

For actionable items, you can further clarify what you need with each:

  • Is it time-bound? Put it in a calendar.
  • Do you want to be reminded of it regularly? Set an alarm.
  • If it is not time-bound, then put it in a backlog.
  • Do you need to delegate it to somebody? Put it on a delegate list.
  • Is it an item you must wait for before acting on it? Put it on a waiting-for list.
  • Can you finish it within the next couple of minutes? Do it now.
  • Group items that are related together and turn them into a project list.

For non-actionable items,

  • Does it have value? Put it in a “someday” or “maybe” list.
  • Is it something that you find you will need in the future? File it under reference.
  • If it has no value, discard it.

I’ve discussed this before in my KMS series of posts, but essentially, this workflow comes from the Getting Things Done School of Knowledge Management.

How I Manage my To-Dos

I have my KMS and generally practice all the rules I wrote above. Despite that, I must admit that my actionable to-do list is even larger now. However, I’m not confused about it because I trust my system.

But to be honest, I’m not 100% confident in my system. Doubt always creeps in, and I try something else. Sometimes, I find myself “optimizing” more than applying what I’ve set up.

Over the past few months, I’ve restarted countless times, reworked, revamped, and rejected so many iterations. My advice is that it will happen, as there is no perfect system—only a workable one. Keep at it, and you will eventually find a setup that suits your idiosyncrasies.

When things become too large and paralyze you, it pays to focus on small, basic things. We sometimes over plan to the point that we already think about things that are not even feasible. Put those in the Someday list. Focus on what you need to do now.

In my case, the overplanning extended to my calendar. I was planning so much that I eventually lost all motivation when I looked at it. Maybe the striving overachiever optimist in me made me think I could churn out 800-1000-word blog posts thrice a week.

I’m in the middle of a purge right now and writing this post while in the thick of it. I wanted to document it as some sort of catharsis.

Tools I Use to Manage My To-Do List

If you’ve read my KMS posts before, I use five tools to manage it: Dynalist, Workflowy, Obsidian, Notion, and Google Calendar. I added a sixth, my blog(s).

  • Dynalist I use for general, non-project to-dos. It also hosts my brain dump and easy-to-refer lists.
  • I use Workflowy for my journal entries, and it also hosts my current projects.
  • Obsidian is for archiving references and collecting and ruminating ideas that have value. It also hosts all Someday and Maybe lists.
  • Notion is for databases. This is where I put in all of my structured data, such as trackers and calculators. This also hosts most of my notes and ideas for blog content.
  • Google Calendar is for all of my scheduled to-dos. I’ve also appreciated Google Tasks, which is integrated with it.
  • My blogs are currently the output of my KMS. I’ve overlooked the value of putting out what I’m putting in. Knowledge and experience, from my unique point of view, can help others no matter where they are.

If you’re going to build your new to-do list after reading this post, you can use your tool. There is no preferred one. The best tool is always the one you use.

Wrapping it Up

Clarity is something we take for granted. They say that if a problem is clear, then it is already half-solved. Whole relationships suffer for a long time because of the lack of it.

Similarly, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Clarify your to-do list, and it will allow you more freedom to do what you need to do.