Visualise Your To-Do List

The psychological effect colors have on us

A study performed in the University of British Columbia demonstrated that colors have an effect on cognitive task performances. In short, if the task requires vigilant attention (like memorising information), then red might be particularly appropriate. If the task calls for creativity and imagination (like designing or brainstorming), then blue would be more beneficial.

Colour psychologist Angela Wright says that the color itself is not as important as its intensity. Bright, strong colors stimulate and lighter colors with low saturation sooth. According to her, red affects the body, blue affects the mind, yellow affects the emotions and green affects the balance between the mind and body. Therefore, blue colors might help you to be more creative. Yellow can make you more optimistic, red stimulates you physically and green helps you feel balanced and calm. When you combine more than one color, you get the effects of both of them.

Choose a few main colors and spice them up with others. Wright talks about the effects of colors like purple (encourages deep contemplation), orange (focuses our minds on physical comfort like food and warm), pink (nurtures) and brown (solid, reliable and supportive).

I also used these articles as a source for this part:

The exact color to paint your office to become the most productive by Chris Bailey

Psychological properties of colours by Colour Affects

Ways to visualise your todo list

You can use this knowledge of colours when visualising your todo list. There are plenty of ways to visualise your tasks, depending on your level of creativity, time and budget.

One of the most obvious ways is to put your task list on the wall. You need some paper, post-it notes or index cards, some markers, Blu-tack or tape. You can draw calendars, timelines, mind maps or big tasks. Especially post-it notes come in all kinds colors that give you a way to color-code your tasks in any way you want.

In my previous workplace, we had one wall painted with whiteboard paint. You don’t need to do that, but purchasing a smaller whiteboard can work just as well. Not only can you jot down your calendar or your tasks but also doodle anything else you want. You can also draw a matrix to place your tasks in one of the following boxes: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, or not urgent or important.

Calendars work especially well when you have tasks with deadlines or start dates. You can combine the usage of calendar with other ways to manage your tasks. One of them, of course, is to use kanban board. Post-it notes or index cards put in different columns will help you see all your tasks at one glance and you can move the cards around to your heart’s content.

Doodle it to your notebook. Doodling unleashes your creativity and can make adding and crossing off your tasks fun! It can even reduce some of your stress. And before you say you can’t draw: every child on this planet can draw. You did too — remember that! It might not be a great piece of art but it can help you, make you smile and be fun — and that’s important!

One of my favourite ways to visualise tasks is called Paper Clip Strategy. James Clear introduces it in his blog post. The idea is to let visual cues remind you to start the behaviour, display your progress and boost your motivation. Clear offers two concrete examples:

• Need to send 25 sales emails every day? Start with 25 paper clips and toss one to the other side each time you press Send.
• Want to drink 8 glasses of water each day? Start with 8 paper clips and slide one over each time you finish a glass.

You could also use a stack of post-it notes. Put the notes in a pile in the order you plan to accomplish them. At the end of the day, if all goes according to the plan, the pile is gone!

I also used this article as a source for this part:

Seeing is Doing: 8 Creative Ways to Visualize Your To-Do List by Belle Cooper