Audio Transcript:
There are two ways to divide your To-Dos into two, which you might find helpful.
Most days, twelve spacious To-Dos is plenty, but occasionally I have a lot of little to-dos. For instance, sometimes I’ll break a big, vague, overwhelming task into several shorter, simpler To-Dos, which is a great practice, but it can generate a lot of To-Dos.
If I’m afraid that I’m going to run out of To-Do spaces, I might be tempted to not write all the little steps down. I’ll remember the rest, right? Uh, probably not. That would mean trusting my challenged working memory. Not only is juggling things in my head stressful, confusing, and fatiguing, but I’ll almost certainly forget some things. Even more importantly, since my visual working memory is weak, seeing a task clearly in writing is just plain more powerful, more motivating, than trying to juggle vague ideas in my head and then retrieve them later.
So here’s what you do when you need more To-Dos. Just draw little check boxes on the second line of each To-Do, which now gives me up to twenty-four To-Dos.
And then there’s another way that I usually split my To-Dos into two.
On workdays, I divide my To-Dos into regular To-Dos and FT, or Free Time. This keeps the two lists cleaner & easier to follow, and maybe it provides more balance in life.
Usually, I’ll write a neat FT in the second or third to the last To-Do, with a box around it. I was writing AW (after work), but I thought the term Free Time might encourage me to be more thoughtful about how I use the time that I’m not working. Of course, I schedule things in the evening also if there is a time element.
So you can divide each To-Do into two, if you need more To-Dos.
And you might want to divide the entire list into two if that helps you to manage Work Time and Free Time.