Title: To-Do List Formula
Author: Damon Zahariades
Stars: 5/5
Review:
One of the new skills I’ve been trying to learn over the past few months as I transform my life is time management. I’ve looked at a lot of productivity tools to that end, but one of the things I’ve always felt buried by is my to-do list. In the past I’ve treated my to-do lists as a sort of brain dump, a place where I can list the stream of consciousness that weighs down my mind and makes my tasks seem like an insurmountable mountain. Turns out that’s not a super great way to organize your information. Who knew?
I suspect a lot of people have a similar process and while it is important to write down everything you need to accomplish, it is only the first step in producing an effective to-do list. This book breaks down 10 of the most popular to-do list formats, lists their strengths and weaknesses to teach you the fundamentals before showing you how to take those blocks and build your own to-do list. Zahariades also teaches you how to maintain your to-do list, the pros and cons of an offline or online list, and even some nice information about how to define and break goals into their disparate pieces.
One of the biggest lessons I took from this book was that tasks on your to-do list should have context, rather than just being a line on the list. You should know how long a task should take, what goal that task is progressing, where that task needs to happen, and who else you need help from to complete it. I also like his advice to write each task as a specific active verb rather than just a noun. Instead of writing “laundry” it’s “start a load of laundry” and instead of “call mom” it’s “call mom to schedule breakfast next week.”
What I like about Zahariades' approach is that he doesn’t tell you the “correct” way to do something. Instead he provides the knowledge and advice for you to build your list your way and tells you that what works for some people might not work for all people. I also enjoyed the conciseness of the text. At around 100 pages, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, or become an arduous task of its own to learn. Zahariades’ text is friendly, informative, and to the point so you can learn this skill and begin applying it immediately.
This is a great book to pick up if you’re looking to make your to-do list work for you instead of the other way around. I’ve begun applying the fundamentals I learned here and my output has already noticeably increased.
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