On Making a To Do List

First Published: 2026 September 6

Draft 2: 6 September 2026

Making a master to-do list is something kinda fun I sometimes do. Draft 1 has the details in detail, but the general process is:

1. List all tasks at high level (do dissertation, not “write Intro, edit intro, write methods, ...”)

2. Give each task a value for importance and urgency

3. Make sure that the tasks are ranked in correct importance order

4. Write a new list sorted by importance

5. Taking urgency into account, order items by overall priority (and if below a certain priority cutoff, just cross out for now)

6. If the items are really multi-step (e.g. dissertation), make a new list of what tasks go into that, being as granular as needed

7. If still feeling like you want to productively procrastinate, give new tasks effort and time markers, so that when you have “I have fifteen minutes and my mind is empty, what’s something I can work on?” you can do stuff

8. Smile and look at the pretty picture

There’s something to be said for a method of making a to-do list that doesn’t require such effort or paper use. But, I find that the more time that I give myself for remembering tasks, the less likely I am to let any given task not make it on the list. It’s more important to me that I don’t forget things than that I feel like I’ve used the time completely “optimally”.

Also, it’s important to me to consciously acknowledge “this item isn’t important enough for me right now”.¹ When I have a number of low-import very urgent tasks, I can accept that they will not get done. Ideally, the focus travels:

1. High Importance High Urgency

2. High Importance, Medium Urgency

3. Medium Importance, High Urgency

4. Everything else

After getting through the highs, I find that it’s task dependent. Overall priority is sometimes to the less important but more urgent task or vice versa, based on how I’m feeling.

Now, there’s definitely something to be said for maintaining some form of master list. However, I find that bringing former iterations of the list to the table sometimes makes me keep items on it that no longer serve me. E.g. if I am not at all thinking about painting, and I see that painting is on the list, I still find myself expending more mental effort in choosing not to prioritize it than I would if I just hadn’t seen painting at all. It’s a tough balance between “what if I forget something” and “who cares?”. Sometimes I’ll do a quick read-through of previous lists after finishing the list of all tasks just to ensure that I’m not missing anything from a previous iteration.

Anyways, this is something that works for me!

I don’t know if it is the method that will work for everyone, but I think that it’s worth giving a try, especially in high-stress situations.²

That’s all from me today! Look forward to tomorrow’s musing “on Labor”.³

Draft 1: 6 September 2026

For the first time in what feels like forever⁴, I found myself wanting to blog but not knowing what to write. I realized that the daily reflection I’ve been doing under the blog doesn’t really serve me how I want. Instead, it would absolutely serve me better as something that I have as a flowchart or something similar in physical reality. I still think that the pushpin board will be the best place for it, but I still don’t know if that’s possible.

Anyway,⁵ I was, for the first time since making this iteration of the list, glad to have my “upcoming posts” list, even though it’s not on the public-facing portion of the blog.⁶ Most of the posts⁷ that I want to write are deeper than I have time to do in full today (And yes, I am aware that in the last post I made I said that wasn’t going to stop me from posting something incomplete, but there’s a difference between “I thought I’d get this done and didn’t” and “I know that I don’t want to expend the mental energy it will take to get this post to a place that would be finished, even in part”). One post that isn’t like that, though, is the post on “How I make my full to-do list when feeling like there’s too much to do.”⁸

So, what’s my strategy?

First, I just go through and write down literally everything that needs to be done, regardless of whether it’s so small that most people think that it shouldn’t have an entry (e.g. wave to a friend) or is so large that it’s not, in any world, one item (e.g. finish my dissertation). I don’t worry too much about completeness here, but I do try to be thorough. That is, if something comes up later, it won’t throw off the process at all, but if it doesn’t come up without serious thought, that’s also a sign that it might not be that important to me.⁹

Oh, to be clear, each entry is listed one below another. I’m usually a fan of filling space as much as I can, but for what we’re going to do next, it’s best to reserve space to the right¹⁰ of the page. If there are more entries than one can fit on a single page, I’ll then add a second column if needed. If I think that it’s going to hit something more than the single double column page, back of paper is allowed, as is multiple pages.¹¹

OH!

I meant to say this above, but ideally this is the largest possible grouping. So, I would put “finish dissertation”, rather than “write draft of Introduction, draft methods, etc.”. Why? That’ll come up later.

Partially it’s to remind myself of the bigger picture at all times (this will become clearer in a bit).

Having made the total list, this list is now List 1-A.¹²

At the top of the page, add two new columns to the right (see why we needed the space?): Importance and Urgency. Importance is how bad the consequences will be if the task is not accomplished. E.g. “Write an album” right now would be a 4 for me, because I would be sad if it never happens. Back when I was writing a dissertation, that was a 9 or 10, because it would more or less ruin my life plans if it didn’t happen.

Absolute scoring isn’t super important here. I also find that when teaching people this, it’s important to stress that this is not a well-thought out decision. It should be the first number that comes to mind when looking at the first task. From there, the same should happen for each successive task.

Urgency is the time one has before consequences arrive. E.g. for a dissertation, when it’s due. For something like “write an album”, the urgency is effectively 0, because it is something I want to do at some point, but I have no real timing in mind.

List 1-A has now become List 1: the unsorted list of large tasks with urgency and importance.

Oh shoot, there’s a few variations on this method depending on how much time i have.¹³ Right now I’m assuming that the person making the list wants more time to consider the tasks because they’re feeling overwhelmed and this task, being so rote and long, is soothing. Anyway, if not, List 1-A to List 1 and List 1 to List 2 can be combined into one.

To make List 2, we grab a new piece of paper. All tasks are then rewritten from List 1 from highest to lowest importance.

Wait no, that’s not quite right. Shoot we’re at List 1-B not List 1-Final.

So From list 1-B to the final version, we go through and confirm that the importances are correct. That is, go through and assign the ordinal¹⁴ for each task from highest to lowest (so in my two item list, dissertation gets “1” and album gets “2”). If it turns out that you’ve mis-assigned an importance to a value (read: you realize Task B is more important to you than Task A, even though you put different numbers down), you change the relevant importance value(s) and then change the number. Sometimes this does require adding decimal numbers. As an example, consider List 1-A: (right now a fake list, draft 2 may include a real list)

• Dissertation

• Write an album

• Have a friend over for dinner

• Finish reading True Color

• Finish the design of the big embroidery

• Learn embroidery stitches

• Clean home

• Find career

This can turn into List 1-B:

In this situation, we can assume that I am so focused on the dissertation that the idea of finding a career seems laughable. I would then go through and start adding in the ordinal numbers:

Then realize that “huh, finding a career does feel more important to me than writing an album”. Imagine that being in parentheses means struck through¹⁵

In doing that, I see that I have multiple items at importance 3, and so add decimals.

Looking at each item, in this case the list feels like it’s correct (each item is more important than the item following it).

I then go to create List 2:

Wow look at that! Sorted from most to least important.

From here, I then go and see that clean home is the only (relatively) low importance item with real urgency. It’s not the best method, but I’ll use that as the clue that anything below it shouldn’t be a focus right now, and I’ll mark an x next to the other items to remind myself that I don’t really need to worry about them at all. For the remaining items, I look at the urgency and their importance to give them a priority (I’m going to have changed some of the numbers around so that it’s a little clearer what the point of this is).

Look at that! A few items changed priority based on more than importance, because like I can consider a career forever, but my friends leave in X days (or something). From there, I do also like to note if there’s anything that’s dependent on another task. E.g. I need my home to be clean to have friends over, so “clean home” isn’t actually a real task, but rather a part of “have friends over”!

Since that’s the case, I realize that I don’t really need to think about the album right now either. My to-do list has shrunk (for now) to three items. Now comes the really really really fun part: we iterate this! List 2 has three items on it: Dissertation, Career, Friend for dinner. I then go through each of those and make a list of everything that needs to happen for the task to be accomplished. (adding a fourth item that’s just “return library book”, because it’s important to remember single items are still valid).

Return library book is good, because it’s the only item.

Invite friends over has:

• Clean house

• Find day and time with friends

• Shop for food

• Prepare food

• Decide if there’s anything else that I want to do with them that night

• Enjoy time with friends.

And I give each item here importance and dependencies (ex: I cannot prepare food until I shop for it)

c|c|c List Position & Task & Dependency
1 & Clean House & None
2 & Find date and time & None
3 & Shop for food & 2
4 & Prepare food & 3
5 & Decide if there’s anything else I want to do with them that night & 3 & None
6 & Enjoy the night! & 2, 4

Then I do the same thing for the dissertation:

And then again for the career search (omitted for time).

Then we get to the fun “choose your own adventure time”. Depending on what tasks I have, sometimes I’ll then go through and add ranking or boolean for time required, mental exertion required, effort required, etc.¹⁶ Or, I’ll just rearrange the list to have the non-dependent items at the first, and then either set deadlines or start working on the tasks there!

Is this the most efficient method?

Not at all.

Is it the best method?

Eh.

Is it a method that helps people feel less overwhelmed and more capable of doing what they need to do?

In my experience, absolutely.

Ok so time to make a much shorter version of this for draft two.