My most recent iteration of todo-list system with TickTick

Over time I’ve tried many different styles of to-do systems and apps, most of which have ended in the slow realization that I was stressed & the my version of the system was a flaming pile of crap (exhibit A: the “mountain of post-its” system ).

In my most recent flirtation with productivity, I’ve stumbled on a system that is working decently well at accomplishing the key objectives:

• Objective A: Allow my anxious brain to feel comfortable that we have saved all the ideas (even if they won’t ever happen)
  • Why? I’ve tried the “if you don’t remember it, it wasn’t important” filtering approach before, and it a) didn’t work for important real tasks, and b) didn’t make me feel less stressed about forgetting little notes & ideas. My brain flits between too many things for it to work, unless I accept dropping the ball across many areas of life.
• Objective B: Not overwhelm me with a massive to-do list where it’s hard to sift the important from the optional
  • Why? In a previous system iteration, I found that the TickTick app was as close to a friction-less inbox as I could get, which was great for Objective A. Everything could be collected without fear of loss, great! This exacerbated a different problem, since I had no good system for processing or prioritizing the increasing stream of to-dos. This created a monster which threatened my sleep & my enjoyment of life, because I constantly felt like i wasn’t doing enough.

My Current Process 🔗︎

I’ve settled into a light equilibrium with the current process, though it definitely has room for improvement.

1. Only one option for intake: Anything & everything comes into the inbox. Urgent tasks, reminders, movie recommendations, quotes i want to save, links i should read later, recipes, ideas to ponder, etc.
2. Triage: In small time snippets throughout the week, I triage into various Buckets. Relevant reminders are usually set when created, otherwise added during triage.
3. …random action: writing this out has made me realize the rest is pretty adh-hoc. I try to skim the Doing bucket when I sit down each week on Sundays and try to plan out the “Big Rocks”, but I don’t have a great way of actually fitting the triaged tasks into my life. I think for now I just check my to-do list app too often every day out of concern, but that doesn’t feel like a healthy system.

The Buckets 🔗︎

My system currently uses TickTick (a to-do app), but you could replicate this in many formats.

One
feature specific to TickTick is a workaround for the per-list task limit they set for the free tier.
So some of my Bucketsare a single list, and others are a grouped set of lists, since in TickTick you can view the entire group as if it was one. Some of the sub-lists have minor meaning, and others are just “extensions” on another list when I ran out of space.

• Opportunities: where I try to tuck most action items, since they are things I am not required to do. There are no or limited consequences if they don’t happen, I lose out on the potential upside mostly. The framing as “opportunities” helped my brain feel less overwhelmed by my constant influx of potential tasks.
  • This Bucket has a few sub-lists to make things easier, like Projects for Me, and Social.
• BrainFood: is where any “content” goes. That’s links, thoughts to ponder, etc.
• ToExternal: is anything I want to save, but isn’t an action. Quotes, recommendations, lessons learned, etc.
• Doing: is stuff i definitely will need to do.
• NoActionNeededUntil: is reminders and tasks that I can’t act on until much later, so i want them out of sight until I can actually do something about them.
• Creation Tracker: this is a list i’m using for tracking how much “creation” i am doing, since lately i want to be consuming less in my life & being more of a creator. I want to be like the prolific people I look up to who are constantly putting out blog posts, code, ideas, art, etc. It was easier to tuck into TickTick than to add yet another doc somewhere I’ll forget to update.

Areas of Improvement 🔗︎

For now, I think the biggest bang for my buck is solidifying my routine & making it the default for my weeks. I had experimented a couple months ago with designing a very clear routine with time slots allocated for triaging my inbox and for tackling the various key buckets, and when I was following it I felt the least stressed I’ve ever been.