How To Kill Your To Do List, Developer Style!

Are you one of those people that creates to do list’s, action plans, project plans, and seems to have millions of things to do?  There is actually a simple “Hack” you can use today to get your life back on track.  I just finished reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity: Books: David Allen, and have taken some great ideas from the book!  I highly recommend reading it. Follow along with me on this journey to getting more stuff done than you ever imagined, developer style!

Set Yourself Up For Success

Before we start, the whole idea here is to process things fast!  If you can’t do something in two minutes, figure out what you will do with it.

Create 5 folders on your computer.  Inbox, Action Items, Incubate, Current Projects, Archive.  Create shortcuts to these folders on your desktop.  Get the same 5 folders in front of your desk in physical folders.

The Inbox Folder

The Inbox Folder is where you want to put things you haven’t processed yet.  What goes in here? New music you downloaded that you haven’t had a chance to put away, files you are sent from colleagues, software installations you’ve downloaded, random text clippings, bookmarks you want to keep track of and don’t know where to put them, meeting minutes, invoices to pay, etc. Your main goal for this folder is that at the end of the day, this folder is completely empty!

Action Folder

Anything that will take you more than two minutes to complete should go in here.  This could be files that you need to clean up, but can’t delete until you read them, HR forms that need to be processed, etc.

Incubate

Here you will put things that you might want to do at some point, but aren’t totally ready to do at the moment.  You can even create a file within the folder that says “The Incubation List”.  This is where you can write out anything you might want to do at some point, but are not getting to.  You will want to review this folder regularly.

Current Projects

These are current projects you are working on, live projects if you will.  On my computer I keep an expenses folder, a client projects folder with all the clients we have, a research folder for current research I am doing, and I keep some employee files in here as well that are current and pertinent.  The idea here is that you keep everything you could use in an instant on hand and readily available to you.

Archives

This folder is easy.  Once things in current projects are completed, we would move it to the Archives folder.  For example, you can keep Archived Clients, Achieved Projects, Resumes, etc in this folder.

Now Kill The To Do List

Now that you have setup your computer, and physical folders, you are ready to rock and roll!  This part is actually fun.

1. Take every file that you have on your computer, important emails, anything lying around, and place it into your Inbox.  Do the same with papers that are lying around your office.
2. One by one, go through each item and ask yourself if you can do something with it right away. 
3. If you can, do it right away!  Then once you’re done, put it in Archives if you want to keep it around.  If not, dispose of it!
4. If you need to delegate the item, send it to someone else and forget about it!
5. If it’s something you need to do, but will take more time, put it into the Action folder!
6. If it’s something you need to do, but want to do later, put it in the Incubate folder.
7. If you don’t want to do anything with it, throw it out or delete it!

Every day, make sure you never end a day with your inbox full.  At the end of the week, move any competed projects in Current Projects to Archives.  Go through the Incubation folder and see if you want to take action on these items now.  At the end of the month, go through the Archives folder and delete things you won’t need anymore.

This process is discussed in detail in “Getting Things Done” which I highly recommend you read.  The book goes into much more detail of course, however this should be enough to get you started.

Quick Recap

Create these folders on your computer and desk:

Inbox –> Action –> Incubate –> Current Projects –> Archive

Follow the process:

Take Action Now –> Take Action Later –> Delegate –> Archive –> Incubate –> Delete / Trash

Review Process:

Daily –> Weekly –> Monthly

Follow these steps, and you will be on your way to destroying that to do list that you can’t seem to complete!

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