Thoughts on ‘to-do’ lists

I’ve done a bunch of reading about personal productivity in the last year or so with my primary source of inspiration being David Allen’s, Getting Things Done. I’ve been working with getting tasks out of my head and onto paper for over a year and have recently been going back to four pieces of information gleened from Merlin Mann’s 43folders.com blog.

Anatomy of a to do:

• it’s a physical action
• it can be accomplished in one sitting
• it supports valuable progress towards a recognizable goal
• I am the most appropriate person for the task

Keeping these in mind as I work on my various contextual pages of notes has been really helpful. You can read more at Merlin’s article Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part 1.