My three-do list

Lists completely unravel me.

I’ve followed the popular advice of having a short “right now” list, and a longer “someday” list.

I look at the right now list several times a day, but I still add too many things to it, meaning everything on there eventually becomes invisible again.

The experiment

This is my year of experimenting, so I made a tiny change to my right now list that seems to be working, at least for the moment.

Instead of listing items numerically like this:

1. Item
2. Item
3. Item

Or as bullets like this:

• Item
• Item
• Item

I’ve done this:

ONE
====
Item

TWO
====
Item

THREE
=====
Item

It’s tiny, but for my brain it’s been a powerful shift.

This makes them look like projects, and I’m not allowed to add any more that 3 items (hence the ultra-awkward “Three-do list” title).

Anything I’d want to add to a 4th and beyond goes into the other someday list – which is really hard, because “someday” might be in 3 days time.

Obviously this means I can’t use a traditional “todo” app – it needs to be a text file, which works for me because I generally prefer text-based tools.

Solution? Probably not… it’s just a hack.

But it’s changed the way I look at my todos, which is probably the jolt my brain needed.

It’s definitely made me more thoughtful about what I put on my plate, and means I have to really stick to the task and complete it. Once it’s done, I can remove it and add another item from the someday list (so there are always 3 on the right now list).

If you’re interested, these are the tools I use:

• “Right Now” list is a text file in SimpleNote.
• “Someday” list is a checklist in Tasks.
• Both sync across devices so I can see them on Macbook, Android phone, whatever. Simplenote is free, Tasks is $89 for a lifetime account (less for annual etc).

Let me know if you try the all-text “Three-do” list 🙂