Today I'll share my simple method for organizing tasks, activities, and goals. It's not particularly original or exotic — I probably began with ideas from David Allen's GTD method and gradually adapted them to fit my own needs and practices over time.
It relies on just three lists:
- SOMEDAY list — projects, goals, obstacles, and ideas for the future.
- THAT DAY list — tasks tied to specific days (birthdays, appointments, etc.).
- EVERY DAY list — recurring habits and routines.
The goal is simple: move tasks to the appropriate list — including between lists — until they are completed. To do this, I suggest setting aside one hour every day — this will be the first activity on your "EVERY DAY" list, dedicated to managing the method and your goals.
Below is a detailed explanation of how this method works.
Who This Is For
This guide was written for people who have a more or less stable job, a routine with real commitments, access to a phone or computer, and who sometimes feel the day slips by without much getting done — whether working from home or not.
To implement this method, I recommend setting aside one hour per day from the start. To find out if you have that time available, check right now on your phone how much time you've spent on social media apps and other distractions over the past few weeks — especially TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
Seriously — check right now. Write down that number and which apps you use most. In the future, you'll be able to see your progress more clearly if you have that data.
This guide has a financial cost of nearly zero — we work only with free resources and assume you own a smartphone, as the vast majority of adults reading this likely do.
The SOMEDAY List
The SOMEDAY list, or task list, has a relatively self-explanatory name, but mine has a small difference. It's made up of three columns.
In the first column, you have today's date on the first row, tomorrow's date on the next, and so on. In the next column, you have any project, idea, goal, or topic that interests you and that you'd like to develop later. The idea isn't to schedule each task on a specific day, but to visualize how many days you'll need to get through everything.
If you're going to dedicate one hour per day to your projects, it's recommended that each task gets one hour of attention. This doesn't mean the task will necessarily be finished in one hour — just that you'll devote up to one hour to exploring it each day. If you finish before the hour is up, you can move on to the next one — or, if you have more time available, you can go deeper on that task or advance to others. If you have more distant dreams, like traveling to Japan or learning the violin, you can put them here too. Even problems to tackle (too much time in traffic, back pain, an annoying boss, etc.) can go here.
The only exception is tasks that can be resolved immediately and don't need to be written down. Following the GTD method, anything that can be done in two minutes or less — writing a short email, sending a voice message, etc. — should be done now, not noted as a reminder.
The third column is for notes — details, reminders, or ideas related to each task.
Why write down a date if the task won't necessarily be completed on that day? The idea is to provide perspective on the number of accumulated tasks. If you keep pushing everything to the end of the month, for example, you'll see overloaded days ahead and realize you'll have to choose some tasks and discard others.
Personally, I prefer to do this in OpenOffice Calc, Google Sheets, or Excel, but you can use any planner that seems most pleasant to you. If you prefer, there are some advantages to using a physical medium: it forces you to better confront the the fact that your days are finite, and writing by hand also creates a more intentional relationship with tasks — unlike Excel, where rows can multiply almost infinitely with a copy-paste or a few mouse movements. You can use a simple notebook, keeping the same idea of one project per line.
It's important that you always have easy access to this list. If you use a physical notebook or a PC you don't always carry, use a notepad or app on your phone that can always be in your pocket, and transfer those notes to the SOMEDAY list from time to time. Try different things and see what works best for you.
The THAT DAY List
This list is essentially a calendar with all your non-negotiable commitments — those tied to a specific day, like a birthday, a work meeting, a trip, and so on.
Use any calendar you prefer. I personally like to use the same tools mentioned above, simply opening a new tab in Excel or Google Sheets for this second list. But you can use your phone's calendar, a wall calendar, a planner, or any tool you're used to and comfortable with. The important thing is that you access it every day — and if it offers automatic alarms and reminders, even better.
I particularly like having an overview of the coming weeks and months. So a diary in book form is less useful to me than a planner where one page contains a whole week or month — something that lets me see the complete picture at once. I also use the same list to keep a small diary of events, mistakes, achievements, etc.
The EVERY DAY List
This is a list of daily habits — a checklist repeated each day, which simply serves as a reminder of what you should do.
The first habit to include is the daily hour dedicated to managing your three lists. From there, you can gradually add new habits — but my recommendation is to only add a new habit once you're already consistently fulfilling the ones already on the list. Starting small is better than piling up commitments you won't keep.
If you have specific times and alarms that help you carry out these tasks, that's even better. For this list in particular, I prefer a simple checklist app, like Loop Habit Tracker, which is free. My daily list contains things like staying hydrated, stretching for fifteen minutes, meditating for ten minutes, and so on.
It's up to you to decide whether your EVERY DAY list will be tied to a specific time or not. My recommendation is that, if you have the option, try to always complete the same habits at the same time — this greatly helps with consistency. If you only look at your list at the end of the day, you may end up overwhelmed. It's worth associating each habit with an alarm or a specific time of day. At the end of the month or week, review your habits to see what needs more attention.
How to Prepare Your Phone
All your lists should be easily accessible, whether on your phone or computer — if you spend many hours a day in front of a PC, it may be more practical to have them there. Alternatively, you can carry a notebook in your pocket at all times. What matters is easy access.
Since the phone is the most immediately accessible object for most of us — and, frequently, the main culprit for wasting our hours on useless activities — I recommend organizing everything around your phone. The first thing to do is put all relevant apps and documents on the home screen and remove all time-wasting apps, such as TikTok, Instagram, and similar. Since many people find it hard to stop picking up their phone impulsively, every time you pick it up, you'll be greeted by a home screen that reminds you of what you should be doing.
Since we sometimes get stuck on the bus, in traffic, or in an Uber, it's also useful to have some tasks already prepared on your phone. If you want to learn German, for example, you can download one or two apps for that and put them on your home screen. Similarly, if you find useful content on YouTube — not short videos or YouTube Shorts, but genuinely relevant long lessons, audiobooks, or podcasts — you can download them in advance and keep them accessible. These shortcuts save just a few seconds in theory, but in practice they significantly reduce the friction between you and your goals. As recommended in books like Atomic Habits by James Clear, reducing friction is one of the most effective strategies for building good habits.
Getting Your Tasks Done
Now I'll explain what to do during the hour you set aside every day to work on your lists.
Start by checking the THAT DAY list to see your upcoming commitments, and the EVERY DAY list to verify you're keeping up with your habits. But this specific hour is dedicated to the SOMEDAY list.
The idea is to take the first item on the list and decide if you want to work on it for an hour. If you don't, simply move the date to a more appropriate time. If learning German seems like a distant dream at the moment, you can push that task three months ahead. The risk here is endless postponement — but each time the task reappears, you'll be forced to reflect on whether you want to keep putting it off or if it's time to act (or simply abandon it). Either way, choose a task and dedicate an hour to it.
It's worth remembering that some tasks simply can't be done at that moment. If you want to start working out at a gym that's closed at that hour, use the time to plan — and add to the THAT DAY list the specific day and time. Planning is already a concrete step.
During that hour, if the task can be completed in that time, work until you finish it and cross it off the list. If it's something that requires much more than one hour — like reading a book, learning German, or planning a trip to Japan — use that time to plan and take the first concrete step. If you want to read a book you don't yet own, research the fastest way to get it and order it right away. If you already have it, sit down and read.
For most tasks, it's worth spending some preparation time before starting. If it's a technical book, read the back cover, the table of contents, browse through it, and decide what you want to learn and how it will be useful in your practical life. If it's a novel, you can simply sit and read. Also, if you know you won't finish the book in one hour, think about the rest of your week — you can bring the book to work, on the Uber, on the bus. Consider a Kindle or an audiobook for idle moments.
At the end of the hour, if the task isn't done, decide when you'll dedicate more time to it and move it to the appropriate date on the list. Don't cling to tasks that have lost their meaning — if you start a book and don't like it, you can cut it from the list or push it a year ahead without guilt.
If you wish, when moving a task to a future date, add a number indicating how many hours you've already dedicated to it: 2, 3, 4, and so on. After every ten hours dedicated to the same task, it's worth stopping and rethinking the plan — whether you're being efficient, whether you're using the most appropriate method, and whether that task still makes sense for your goals.
My rule is to only remove a task from the list once you know for sure you're done with it. If you bought a book and plan to finish it in the coming weeks, push the task a month ahead and only delete it if, when that day arrives, you've already finished it or have abandoned it and don't want to continue. Similarly, if I want to lose weight, I'll likely note a date one week, one month, or two months ahead for a new weigh-in — and perhaps, once I'm satisfied and eating healthily, I'll reschedule the task to check if I've maintained my weight six months or a year from now.
A Few Cautions
Our biggest obstacles are distraction and procrastination. Mark that "one hour" with both an alarm and, if necessary, a timer. Keep phone notifications turned off — in fact, if you can, keep them off 24 hours a day — and avoid anything that might interrupt you. If a break is unavoidable, stop the timer and come back later. The Pomodoro method is a good alternative for maintaining focus for nearly an hour.
If you're facing a difficult problem that requires a lot of reflection or creativity, it's often better to spend an hour in silence in front of a blank piece of paper than to watch TikTok. The chance of some inspiration appearing is much greater.
When rescheduling a task to a future date in the SOMEDAY list, know that there's a real risk it may never happen. Review your lists from time to time to prevent good ideas from being forgotten indefinitely.
During the day, your phone may pull you toward distractions, even with the preparations above. In that case, you can try free apps like One Sec, Minimalist Phone, Grayscale, etc.
Conclusion
The idea of this method is simple: that at the end of each day, you will have made a little progress on things that truly matter to you, instead of being distracted by activities that bring you neither pleasure nor fulfillment.
Good luck and good work!
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