Struggling To Manage Your To-Do List? Try This.

How to take a more stress-free approach to task management.

People have issues with managing their to-do list for a variety of reasons, but the main culprits are; overwhelm, lack of prioritization, an ever-expanding list, and an overlap between different task types leading to confusion. This is likely why recent studies have shown that 89% of people often never finish their to-do lists. So what can you do to ensure you don’t fall into this bracket?

In this post, I’m going to run through some of the most important factors in creating and maintaining a successful to-do list. Some will apply to you and some won’t, but you’ll definitely find information here that will help you to take a more stress-free approach to task management.

Understand The Psychology Behind Completing Your To-Do List

This is one we actually wrote a blog post about a while back (2 years ago actually, where does time go?!). If you’re interested in reading about this in more detail you can check the post out via this link, but here’s a quick summary:

In 1927, Russian psychologist Dr. Bluma Zeigarnik ran an experimental study where participants were asked to complete several simple tasks, such as solving a jigsaw puzzle. Participants were interrupted during some of the tasks and these were left unfinished, whilst they were allowed to complete other tasks in full. Following this study, the participants were twice as likely to remember the tasks that had been interrupted in comparison to the completed tasks. These findings support the theory that crossing things off a to-do list allows the brain to focus on other tasks.

The Zeigarnik study has been replicated many times since and it proves why we remain obsessed with unfinished tasks — and why things like the decision you haven’t quite made yet, or the conversation you’ve been dreading, can keep you up till 3am. This is often referred to as your ‘inner nag’, but the good news is that you can attempt to switch it off, or at the very least wind it down.

Studies by Baumeister and E.J. Masicampo revealed that the Zeigarnik effect was the unconscious “asking the conscious mind to make a plan” to complete the to-do list, rather than asking it to complete it right at that present moment. What’s happening here is a disconnect between our conscious and unconscious minds which are basically arguing with each other in our heads!

Your unconscious mind can’t make a plan to finish the task but it also doesn’t like the feeling of an unfinished task lying around. So, it starts nagging your conscious mind to take action by reminding it about the task. However, this action is simply to formulate a plan for task completion, not to finish the task entirely. I guess your unconscious mind is pretty reasonable, eh.

To sum it up: your brain will stop hassling you about your task list as long as you have an actual actionable plan in place to complete it. The problem is, not everyone does.

Stop Using Your Inbox As Your To-Do List

A while back, we wrote a post outlining why Email is Destroying Your Productivity. Because it is. In one study, it was revealed that around one-third of US workers actually check their emails every 15 minutes of the day. That’s a whole lot of time eaten up during the week. In addition, a 2015 online survey of 400 white-collar employees reported that they each spent 6.3 hours checking their email per day!

Do you leave emails hanging around in your inbox until you’re ready to act on them? If this applies to you, you’re a key culprit here.

Email and task management are not the same thing and using one to reap the benefits of the other simply won’t work.

By using an actual task manager you can spend less time drowning in your inbox and more time clearing your to-do list.

This over-reliance on email for task management is something we’ve noticed for a long time in Buckets. To help tackle this issue, we developed a feature called the Sandbox Relay which allows our users to forward emails directly from their email inbox to our Sandbox. Once in the Sandbox, these emails remain safe until either completed or slotted into the relevant Buckets Project.

Organize Your To-Do List Items

If you haven’t used a digital task manager before then your tasks are probably hanging out all over the place. Your notebook, email, notes app, whiteboard, sticky notes, back of your hand… the list is pretty endless. So firstly, you need to gather all of these into the one place, i.e. Buckets.

Once you’ve added all of your tasks to Buckets, it’s time to create different Projects to manage them in. Don’t worry about creating too many Projects because you can use our hide/unhide feature to keep inactive Projects hidden until you wish to work on them.

You can set up your Buckets workflow in any way that you choose. Most of our users tend to run with a Kanban style workflow of To Do > Doing > Done, which you can learn more about in this intro post to getting set up: The Beginners Guide To Using Cards. However, as you become a more advanced user you’ll probably deviate a bit away from the simplified Kanban in order to meet your own custom needs or those of your team.

Duplicate Recurring Tasks

Increase the speed of your workflow by duplicating any recurring content/tasks such as Notes, Checklists, and Columns. The function to Duplicate Columns in Buckets is one of our latest additions and it’s a great way to carry over a bunch of tasks from one day to the next without having to redo it all over again.

The Power Of Micro-tasks

A lot of people aren’t great at creating to-do lists and end up with very vague lists as a result. In this instance, you can end up with far too many items and not enough actionable steps to help you to complete each one. If you really want to accomplish a goal then you need to get into the nitty-gritty of what it will take to achieve it. And that leads me to the power of micro-tasks.

You have to get specific about the micro-actions required into order for you to complete each task. In Buckets, this means that you should have sufficient Notes, Checklists, and any other info such as Attachments that are required in order to complete the task. But even more specifically, it means having a breakdown of every single action you have to undertake, no matter how small.

To create these micro-tasks, take time to think about what your process will be from start to finish. For example, if my to-do list reminds me to “write a blog post” I’ll have to spend much more time thinking about it than if it reminds me to take the first step and “conduct research for a blog post”.

Prioritization Is Crucial

Studies have shown that your brain gets overwhelmed when it sees a list of 7 or 8 options so it’s clearly best to avoid this where possible. I’ve previously written about The Ivy Lee Method Of Time Management which is a very easy system to help you prioritize your tasks.

Using this method, I make a list each evening of the 6 most important things I need to accomplish the following day. Then, I organize these tasks according to their level of importance. In Buckets, these are held in my “To Do” column and progress to my “Doing” column as I work on each one.

This really helps with avoiding distraction and procrastination as you immediately know what to start working on when you sit down at your desk. The next day, I start with the first task and move through the list one task at a time until all are completed. Once my working day is over, I add any remaining items to a new list of 6 important tasks for the next day.

Task Batching Can Help

If you have completely different responsibilities associated with different tasks, it can be useful to group similar tasks together to get them completed faster. This is also a great way of managing your energy so that you can work on more menial tasks at a low peak during your day and reserve high energy creative tasks for when your brain is at its best.

In Buckets, I use Labels to group my tasks according to category and priority. It might take a little more time to plan your to-do list in this manner but it will definitely save you time in the long run as you’ll complete your tasks much faster.

Making Your To-Do List Public Can Make You More Productive

We recently introduced new Project permissions in Buckets that allow you to make your to-do list completely public. If you’re someone who thrives on external accountability then this is something that might help you to be even more productive.

According to Lydia Dishman in Fast Company: a 2015 study found that “more than 70% of the 267 participants who sent weekly updates to a friend reported successful goal achievement (completely accomplished their goal or were more than halfway there), compared to only 355 of those who kept their goals to themselves, without writing them down.”

Create A Visual Of Your Task List

Using a task management platform like Buckets, you can create your workflow in the way that suits you best, using features such as Labels, Reminders, Notes, and Checklists to make your list as detailed and easy to follow as possible.

Our latest Card update in Buckets allows users to view what’s inside Card before even opening it, so a quick glance of your Project will give you an instant visual of your workload.

Got A Question More Specific To Your Own Workflow?

If you’d like to discuss your own workflow and how to design it in a way that best works for you, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter @Bucketsdotco and we’d be happy to help you out!

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