The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Sal­va­tion of some sort

How­ev­er, there are excep­tions. Trel­lo and Plan­ner (in Office 365) both use the metaphor ​“board with notes in columns” instead of tra­di­tion­al lists where every note is a to-do-task and the columns rep­re­sent things such as cat­e­gories or what sta­tus the task has (if it is, for instance, not start­ed yet, planned for today, or completed).

In both these tools you can attach an image to every note and by click­ing ​“Make cov­er pho­to” (Trel­lo) or ​“Show on card” (Plan­ner) you can allow the image to be dis­played where you view all the notes on the board. It can, for exam­ple, look some­thing like this.

Illus­tra­tive images

One idea is that you find a hand­ful of images that get to rep­re­sent impor­tant aspects of the to-do tasks and that help you deter­mine what tasks to choose for what sit­u­a­tions through­out the day. An edgy-look­ing sea urchin might indi­cate that it is a tricky task that you can choose when you feel up to doing some­thing dif­fi­cult, whilst a qui­et sum­mer mead­ow might com­mu­ni­cate that the task is a pure delight to do and also appro­pri­ate when you are not feel­ing your best or sharpest.

When you are able to visu­al­ly see the var­i­ous aspects of the tasks that char­ac­ter­ize them in a way that makes sense to you, it will become eas­i­er to select what to do next. Are you up for a sea urchin? Or will you start the day with a bang by select­ing a rock­et-ship task?

Do this

Does this sound like a pos­si­bil­i­ty for you and some­thing that might make it eas­i­er to get an overview of all your tasks? If so, try doing the following:

1. Acquaint your­self with Trel­lo or Plan­ner if you have not done so already. They are not hard to get a grasp of at all.
2. Cre­ate a board which you make your pri­ma­ry to-do list.
3. Here comes the fun part. Think about what images you would want to use on the board — mean­ing, what sym­bols, aspects, or fea­tures you want to choose between when view­ing the board. Will you choose images that tell you how long the tasks are? Or maybe how dif­fi­cult they are? Or per­haps where you need to be to do them, who the recip­i­ent of your results is, or who else is involved in the task?
4. Find images online and save them in a place where they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble when you are work­ing with your to-do list. If you use Trel­lo, I sug­gest you cre­ate a fold­er just for these pic­tures. If you have cho­sen Plan­ner as your tool, one option is to put them on the Files-sur­face for the group for your to-do-list-board. You can also cre­ate abbre­vi­a­tions in a text-expan­sion tool that writes out the full search phrase for each image when you write it in the ​“Upload”- or ​“Attach”-fields in each tool.
5. Make sure you find images for all the aspects or things you want visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions for so that the to-do list is com­plete. You might end up with quite a lot of notes in your columns, but then again, you are a busy per­son with a lot to do.

A way that suits you better

If you illus­trate and bring your overview of all the things you have to do to life visu­al­ly, it will appeal much more to you than if you had just resort­ed to using a bor­ing, ordi­nary list. You will no longer have to deal with notes with tasks spread out all over the place and can work know­ing that you have every­thing under con­trol, are not miss­ing any­thing impor­tant which you will be sor­ry for miss­ing lat­er, and can pri­or­i­tize properly.

What’s your way?

How have you got­ten around your aver­sion to lists? Please feel free to write to me and tell me all about it — I am always curi­ous to hear of how oth­ers have solved their struc­ture-relat­ed prob­lems or blockages.

(On anoth­er list-note, here’s how to tell the cal­en­dar and the to-do-list apart.)