Choose your optimal todolist format
O.K.M. Series - Organization 2
Todolists can take many forms: paper lists, white board, post-it notes, Excel sheet, flagged e-mail list, dedicated software and apps, etc.
It is best to choose a format that answers well to your personal requirements. For instance, if you travel often, storing your todolist on the white board of your office will obviously be unpractical.
In the table below, I vertically list a few possible requirements that you may want to consider, and how well they are served by different formats (I clarify the definitions of those requirements in the following sections).
No solution is perfect, you need to select the format that constitutes the best compromise for you.
Mobility
Inputting tasks whenever/wherever they appear to you prevents your todolist from becoming obsolete. It reduces the risk that you forget a task between the time you acknowledge it and the time you store it.
Besides, ability to read your todolist anytime/anywhere boosts your productivity and decision process:
- Frequently reminding your tasks unconsciously grows your willingness to complete them.
- No more decisions are being postponed on the basis that you cannot access your todolist.
Hence, your todolist should be as mobile as you. High mobility is essential if you always work on the go. It is less relevant if you usually stay behind your desk.
Occasionally, your todolist’s lack of mobility can be compensated:
- by carrying with you a buffer (a small notepad, for instance), in which you can note items to add to your todolist later, for you not to forget.
- by taking a picture of your todolist when you move away from it, if you need to read it on the go.
But the need for such methods should remain marginal, as they can be inconvenient, energy consuming and somewhat less reliable.
User-friendliness
You will frequently interact with your todolist, and it will drain a bit of your energy every time you do so. You should try to reduce that bit of energy as much as you can.
How easily can you store a new task? For instance, if you use a software based todolist: how many clicks/touches does it take you to store a task? Are there useless mandatory fields to fill in? Do you experience lag or crashes?
How readable is the todolist? Can you quickly navigate it, from a complete bird view to an individual task’s details? How fast can you mark tasks as complete? Are there automated todolist interpretation features?
For instance, for an Excel todolist: if you input a “due date” and a “workload (in hours)” for each task, you can program an alert that raises when meeting deadlines becomes unrealistic due to too high a workload.
You may experience loss of energy/motivation and risk being unwilling to update or read your todolist if your interactions with it are too laborious.
Flexibility
How easily can you move/modify a task? This has to be considered if you are susceptible to amend your todolist very often and unpredictably.
For instance, IT helpdesks typically use dedicated ticket management software to deal with the high volatility of their tasks and priorities.
Can you quickly reorganize your tasks by criteria, such as category, tag family or due date? Different arrangements can yield different insights.
For instance, sorting your tasks by due date helps to identify upcoming workload surges for you to anticipate.
Paper lists can typically be at disadvantage here: to move a task from one category to another, you must scratch or erase it, and rewrite it elsewhere, provided that you still have space. Do it too often, and your list becomes unreadable. You then have to frequently take time to rewrite it entirely.
Customization
Can you input all the information you need to characterize your tasks? Software-based todolists generally offers you a finite number of imposed data fields. Make sure that those fields meet your needs.
For instance, you may work in different places with variable capabilities (i.e. you can perform some tasks in one place and not in others). By storing that detail, you can later conveniently list all tasks available to do from each place.
Do you require a workflow-based todolist, with custom steps of task completion, instead of the binary “completed”/“not completed” view offered by the simplest software-based todolists?
For instance, if you need to differentiate tasks that you have started versus the ones that are still pending, you can use a completion percentage indicator.
Do you need to review the history of your actions? You may need your todolist’s history to evaluate your own efficiency, for instance by seeing how many tasks you have completed in a given time.
The Excel spreadsheet is the easiest format to customize. It allows you to add as many relevant fields as you need, to define your tasks completion steps and, at the cost of some version management, to keep a history.
Connectivity
Is your todolist automatically saved online? If not, losing your todolist or the device that carries it will represent a time loss, as you will have to rewrite a new todolist. Plus, you might forget some tasks in the operation.
Does your todolist sync between your different devices? You may find comfortable to edit your mobile todolist from your computer, with a keyboard. Or to be able to view it from a tablet even while your phone is plugged at the other side of the room, charging.
Can your todolist automatically create tasks from external inputs? For instance, being able, with a single click, to convert a received e-mail into a task spares you the trouble of storing that task yourself (provided that the automatically created task is properly structured).
Can you share your todolist with other users? Being able to quickly share tasks with your teams (for instance by copy-pasting from your todolist to an e-mail) can speed up your delegation process.
Personal feeling
Do you feel good about your todolist? Are you satisfied with it? This criteria might be the most important, as it defines almost intrinsically how much energy using your todolist will drain from you. For instance, many people are very happy using paper lists, and feel disoriented with any other solution. Although one can argue that their productivity is sub-optimal, I would not recommend forcing them to use a system that they dislike: it would drain from them even more energy than the amount required to cope with the limitations of paper.
Case study: my personal choice of format
(UPDATE: I have moved to and would now recommend “Todoist” - https://todoist.com, which provides a very complete set of features for task management, as well as a community of users who keep improving the application).
I use a Google Tasks account that I synchronize in “Tasks Free”, a mobile application for Android.
Mobility: it is a mobile app. I have it on me literally all the time. This matters to me because I move a lot, and I never really disconnect from work. Plus, I truly love being able to review my todolist from my bed. On the down side, I must be careful never to run short of batteries.
User-friendliness: Thanks to a well-thought widget, it only takes, from my phone’s home screen: one touch to create a new task, one title input, and one final touch to save. I can complete the detail fields or rearrange this task later if needed.
The widget shows my complete todolist in a readable way (you can adjust its scale for it to be as large as your phone permits), directly on my home screen. It allows marking a task as complete in only two touches.
Finally, it continuously displays the list of tasks that are available for me to undertake immediately, under the form of a notification.
Flexibility: The mobile app format allows for task re-organizing, task grouping, automated task sorting and management of several todolists. No time wasted here.
Customization: This application could be viewed as too simple. I am satisfied with what it allows me to do, but it could offer more depth. For instance, there lacks a function for recurring tasks management. I have to handle this manually. Completed tasks are deleted and there is no history. Thankfully I do not need it.
Connectivity: My todolist is saved online on Google Tasks. Hence, I will not lose it if my phone is stolen or damaged, and I can sync it between my two smartphones and my two computers. From a computer, I can copy-paste my todolist.
Personal feeling: I got used to my todolist to the point where it has become a reflex for me to interact with it. Also, I like the design of the application (in particular, the widget blends in harmoniously with my phone’s wallpaper).
To conclude, I hope that the recommendations exposed in this article will have helped you to select a todolist format which best fits your needs and boosts your productivity on a daily basis.
Once you have chosen a format, You still need to define how to structure, manage and use your todolist. I go into this topic in detail in “O.K.M. Series O1 - Craft your ideal todolist”:
Thank you for reading! I welcome your feedback, so please feel free to react, comment, and recommend the article if you enjoyed it. Take care!
