A simple system of multiple to-do lists can help save much-needed brain space at work and at home.
When I read about the Ivy Lee method, I had a feeling it would change my life. And, to a certain extent, it did. For one thing, it gave me a more realistic sense of how many things can really be accomplished in any given day—six, really, seven is pushing it!—and for another, it was simple enough to implement and follow, coming into my life as it did in the wake of numerous fancy planners, sophisticated scheduling systems, and digital platforms.
If you haven’t encountered the Ivy Lee Method before, it’s simple: make a list of six things to do on any one day, and do them. I love this method because it really forces me to consider what is actually urgent. If I only have six slots on my to-do list, I’m less likely to fill them with vague aspirations or things that realistically don’t have to happen until the end of next week.
But those vague aspirations and long-term to-dos still needed a home, as evidenced by my long, crowded “brain dump” to-do lists that I periodically wrote to try to give my brain a break. This was especially true at work—if I was lucky enough to have a list, it was a long one, things crossed out and underlined and circled, inheriting system after system of symbols and color-coding. All of the things on that lengthy list were important. They just weren’t urgent. They hadn’t merited a spot on my extremely selective Ivy Lee list, but they often didn’t have calendar dates, so they didn’t belong in my pared-down planner, either. So I kept them in my mind, and that meant that, fairly often, I forgot them.
Recently, though, when I started keeping track of my Ivy Lee list digitally, I realized that the program I used could—wait for it—support multiple to-do lists. (I use Google Keep, though you could also try this with Trello or the Notes app for iOS.) My long “research” with extensive brain dumps had taught me one thing for sure: almost everything that’s bugging me fits into a limited number of categories.
So I started a second to-do list, and a third. I have a list of things to ask my boss about at our weekly meeting. I have a list of my own personal writing deadlines. I have a list of drafts that are waiting for my edits, and one of drafts that I’m waiting for. There’s an “Urgent” list that I use very sparingly, and even a “Phone Calls Tracker” so that I can check something off my list every time I hang up the phone.
Expanding this system from work to personal life was also pretty effortless. While my work lists are online, my personal lists are in a spiral-bound notebook that I carry with me (though I started out with them in a different online account). In my personal notebook, I have a separate list for things that are nagging me and I don’t want to forget, but that aren’t urgent.
It’s easy to check things off the list, and surprisingly, I’ve found that I drop far fewer things. For one thing, I’m checking in with my lists almost every day. That builds up trust—I know that if I put something on one of those lists, it really will be addressed later. Over the course of any given day, I can be building up my to-do list for the next with real confidence that I’ll actually do what’s on that list. And that means I get that mental space back. When I’m compiling my Ivy Lee list, I can draw from longer-term projects to make sure I am really chipping away at things over time, freeing up even more mental space.
