The problem with a todo list is that it gets really long. There are just so many things I want to get done and only so much time. I can’t possibly do them all.
Throughout my career I’ve led more software projects with more customers and teams than I can count anymore. During that time I’ve learned a lot about what works to be efficient and effectively get things done.
It turns out a lot of the methods used to manage those teams and projects can be applied to personal life and, for a lot of us, the line between work life and personal life is becoming increasingly blurred to where we just have a jumble of things that need to be done across multiple parts of our life all the time. Add a side hustle and the list gets crazy fast.
We need a good process to follow and we need a good tool to help us implement that process. Software and engineering teams have used some flavor of an “agile” methodology for this for a long time now. The basic idea is simple: instead of trying to do everything at once, you commit to a fixed chunk of work for a set period of time, usually a week or two (often called a “sprint”), and you pull that work from a prioritized list of everything else waiting to be done (the “backlog”). That same idea works just as well outside of engineering — for sales teams, office staff, a family, or just one person managing their own life. That’s the foundation of my process, just scaled down to me.
For the tool, I use Drindal because it’s the best. Yeah, I’m biased because I created Drindal, but I created it because I didn’t like the limitations or cost of other tools and needed something that worked for me. Other mainstream options are tools like Asana and Trello if you want to check those out for comparison.
The first thing we need to understand is that we can NOT do everything we think we need or want to do. The full list is growing all the time and we won't get it all done. There is simply not enough time. So, we have to learn to triage our tasks and bring the most important ones to the top of our list as the priority.
Once we identify the top priority tasks we want to get done most, we need to be able to focus on just those items, uninterrupted, for a period of time so we actually finish them before we tackle anything new. Once we finish those items we’ve committed to, we can then start over with more items from the top of the new priority tasks.
Drindal lets me define lists (or sections) on a board and I use 3 lists. The first one is called the Backlog. It holds all my unfinished tasks waiting to be done. It’s really long and I don’t know if I’ll ever get some of those tasks done. It’s ordered by priority with the most important tasks at the top. Each Monday I order the backlog, which usually just consists of sorting the higher tasks to get the most important ones at the top. I’m thinking to myself what will make the biggest difference in my life if I get it done?
The second list is the In Progress list. I generally work week by week so the In Progress list is tasks I’m working on to get done this week. It’s effectively my weekly goals, or my sprint commitment, if you want to use that term. It’s not scheduled meetings or events, like on a calendar. It’s tasks that need to be done this week as opposed to representing a moment in time. There could be a meeting at a point in time associated with it but the task itself represents the goal. The task isn’t “meeting at 2:00 Thursday”. The task is “Discuss contract with Customer X” and a meeting may be the way I get that particular task done. The meeting belongs on my calendar and there’s probably a link to it on my task, along with links to emails or messages leading to the scheduling of the meeting as well as any notes related to the meeting itself after it’s done.
The final list on the board is the “Done” list which is self explanatory. So, on Monday I make sure the backlog has the most valuable tasks at the top and I move enough of them to the In Progress list to keep me busy for the week. Throughout the week I complete those tasks, moving them to the Done list, hopefully leaving me with an empty In Progress list by the end of the week.
After I move the tasks from the backlog to In Progress on Monday, I have committed to those tasks as my priority for the week. My goal is to complete them all before I start any other, less important tasks left in the backlog.
Throughout the week, as new things come up that need to get done, they go in the Backlog, NOT In Progress. Sometimes there will be things that must get done right away and they’ll be an exception but generally, if it’s possible the new task can wait, it goes in the Backlog. That takes discipline because often times the new task may be more fun than what’s in progress or it may just be easy enough I figure I can punch it out quick.
The problem is, those little new tasks add up and eventually end up filling the week so I don’t get my original in progress items done, and it’s probably still actually true on Friday that the tasks I put into in progress on Monday are still what would make me the happiest if they were done. It’s probably true that I’d be happier and more successful if I completed those original Monday tasks than if I completed the new tasks. All to say, if I would just stick to my original plan from Monday, more often than not I’d be better off.
It’s interesting how often it’s the case that if I put new tasks in the backlog instead of in progress through the week, by the time Monday comes again, many of those new tasks don’t make it to the top of the backlog when I order by priority. Sometimes, when I think about it and compare to the other items on the list, those things that seemed so important on Wednesday, just aren’t so important by Monday.
And that’s why this process is so effective. The discipline of putting new things in the backlog lets them cool off a little and lets me wrap my head around them relative to other tasks there so I get things done that are actually the most important. This process also protects the in progress tasks from being deprioritized by new tasks that really aren’t that important but seem like they are in the moment. It helps me be less influenced by the drama of each day that is constantly threatening to side track me.
The process looks like this:
Drindal adds a ton of features that make it easy for me to blend work and hobby projects in with personal life and keep them all straight without things falling through the cracks. I can run enterprise engineering teams, sales teams or personal life with the same tool. It’s got a family plan so my kids have accounts and can throw me a task when they need something taken care of. There’s this water mark feature I really love too. When tasks can’t be addressed until some date in the future, I can set the start date on a task and it will fall below the watermark so I can easily see when I’m done, even though there are remaining tasks, because those tasks can’t actually be addressed today anyway. They’ll come above the watermark when they’re available. I could rail for a while about what makes Drindal a better task manager but that's another story.
Grab a tool like Drindal and give this process a try. It can make life a lot simpler and that’s a happier life.