Coronavirus To-do List Strategy

As of today, I’ve been in self-isolation for two weeks. Two surprisingly productive weeks I’m proud to admit. Over this time, I have worked towards the following strategy to keep me on track and motivated.

1. Every night, make a to-do list for tomorrow. This harnesses the productive energy that I have during late nights and helps roll it over into the morning.
2. When things are completed, move them to the done list for serotonin and accountability.
3. Every day, move the previous day’s to-do list into an archive. From there separate these undone tasks into “still important” and “log”.
4. Place everything with a concrete date into an actual to-do list app, for me that’s Todoist.
5. Review the archive, still important and to-do list app weekly to see what’s coming up and what tasks got left behind. This helps establish a weekly rhythm and deeper reflection about larger projects.

By writing my to-do list fresh every night, I allow myself to reflect on whether the item is still important. This ensures my to-do list is still relevant to my current goals.

The log staves off thoughts of letting things slip my mind and ensures that ideas aren’t lost. As I always add to the top, and I remove tasks that are completed, I end up with a history of large ideas at the bottom of my log.

Additionally, as this process is mostly text based, I can put it anywhere and export it anytime. Also, it’s very easy to move items around so that they can be grouped more logically.

Next Steps

If I were to really take this to the next level, I would create a theme or overarching goal that I would like to achieve. Then guidelines could specify that I need to make at least one little step towards my goal every day.