Placing: The Key to Organizing Your Tasks Effectively

Placing everything you need to do onto your calendar or task lists, so your brain can be free from the burden of memory.

‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’
Ben Franklin (probably)

My Quest

I used to always be on top of my work. I had minimal interruptions, a predictable day, and I could come up with systems that suited me. My personal work and life though, was an unholy mess. Why? Who knows really? Maybe clinical depression, maybe any number of things. What it really boils down to though is that I’m great at doing what other people want me to do. I’m not so great at prioritising what I want to do.

Then I decided to start taking responsibility. Past me could blame anything on anything: being a mother; pre/peri or post natal depression; deciding one dog was lonely so needed two; having too many dogs; having a blended family; any number of past traumas. Blame never helped though. So, why not stop blaming?

I started trying to handle work and life the same methodical way? If something isn’t working, don’t blame the system, update the system. Work often has multiple pressing deadlines (I currently have over one hundred, in total), so why couldn’t I fit in having a shower? Not because I didn’t have time, but because I didn’t have a really solid system (or forgive myself, I didn’t do that either). 

In this series of blog posts I want to walk you through the system that has kept my life and work in control for 6 months, which is a record. I’m in charge of it, it’s not in charge of me, and maybe you’ll find something useful in there!

The Catch Up Session

If you don’t want to trawl through the previous two posts I’ve popped the main points as a bullet list below:

Considered capturing

• Capture all your thoughts and tasks in inboxes

Assessing

• Put all of your electronic and physical inboxes in priority order. 
• Your most important inbox gets checked first
• Your To Do List must be last 
• Decide how many times a day you are going to check them all (schedule this time into your calendar if it helps). 
• Assess what your ‘things to do’ are by going through each item in each inbox, one at a time, in order. 
• For each item either delete, throw, file, do (quick actions), schedule, or make an action from it (add it to your To Do / Action List).

If that was helpful, there’s a quick guide at the end of this installment for those neurospicy among us who could do with this being a 1 minute read (this many words is scary and daunting, even though the search engines love it, but, I hear you, and none taken!). 

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

Placing is where you take each distilled action from your capturing and assessing process. Then decide one by one when you’re going to do it. This can be both specifically and roughly.

As a process it looks a lot like scheduling, because some of the time it is, but not always. In a similar fashion to considered capturing, with each action, I answer a few internal questions (trying to be honest) and place them either in my calendar or into my Task Management System. This has increased my chances of getting things done by about 10 fold (without burn out).

I actually do this at the same time as assessing. However, for email, I actually do all three action steps together (Capture, Assess, Place). You can place an action straight into a project you know it belongs in and file away the email – poof, gone! 

What I have ended up with is still someone else telling me what I need to get done that day, so not much has changed thinking about it. The big difference is the person is my past self, not someone else.

Where do you put it all?

I use a digital task management system because I need it to be as fluid as possible. I’ll explain why I don’t currently use paper in a bit. Maybe one day I’ll figure out the best way to go analogue. Right now though, I want to write a task down once, as I think about it, even if I’m on the loo. Then it either gets done, or gets deleted (because I don’t want or need to do it anymore). It’s taken a long time to get to where I am, where I can trust my system. So have faith, if you’re willing to give it time, you can get there too.

Now, once I have placed an action in my task management system (or calendar) I can walk away and forget it exists. My system looks after it now, and as long as I’m running my system I know I’ll get to it. The burden of ‘I have so much to do, but I don’t know what it is’ or ‘I have so much to do, but I don’t know where to start’ is lifted. I did have to let go though, and that is the hardest part, and I still wrestle with it a bit now. 

I will always pile on too many things I think I need to do. Life is like an all you can eat creative buffet to me. I think I can eat it all. I cannot. I have to be selective so I don’t end up bloated in a calorie coma, with my fifth empty plate as a pillow. So just like my lack of awareness of my stomach capacity, my time awareness would have me believing I can start and finish a novel by lunch. So I need a system that makes it clear. I also need to feel okay about pushing stuff out of the way when I’m feeling overwhelmed. That’s why my Core Calendar is so important, it  shows me how much time I really have, in black and white (well, glorious technicolour) . 

My Task Management system is Todoist. I’ve adjusted it to work how I want it to, but it’s fairly flexible. So the rest of my waffle makes sense, the interactive list below shows you how I organise my lists under areas of responsibility, for easy review (I always include emojis where possible for quick reference).

I have evolved these categories from simply ‘LIFE + WORK’ to ‘LIFE + WORK + JOY’ through a few other iterations, to the above. Only adding new sections when I felt it was necessary, and helped me not waste time organising, instead of doing. These are actually called ‘Projects’ in Todoist, but I split them into what is called ‘Sections’ in the app. I then use those sections for my individual projects that actions/tasks sit under. You can arrange it however works best for you though.

If you want to try out Todoist for free they have lots of templates to try.

Here’s a very basic one I’ve made to get you started if you fancy.

The Placing Process

First things first, I look at what I have written down in my Action List Inbox and decide if it’s one of the following

• an event (party/trip/visit etc)
• a single action/task
• a project or project action

A project simply means it’s going to take more than a couple of tasks to get it done, I know, it seems like a bit much, but it does make sense in the end (to me anyway!). I then decide when I’d like to do it or when it has to be done by. Then how long I think it will take me, roughly.

Below is my attempt to break it down into branching options to try and show how it works for me:

• 1. Is it an event?
  • Yes. Pop it straight into the calendar. If anything needs to be prepped ahead of time for an event today, add it to your calendar. If not… Ask question 2. 
  • No. Ask question 2.
• 2. Is it a project?
  • Yes. Ask question 3.
  • No. Add it to a single task list. Ask question 4. 
• 3. Is this part of an existing project?
  • Yes. Type the project name in your tasks search box and select the project you want to move it to. Ask question 4.
  • No. Create a project section in a corresponding life area, then add the task to it (as above). Ask question 4.
• 4. How long do I need to complete it? 
  • Think of how long you think it will take, then times it by two. Ask question 5.
• 5. When do I want/need to do this by?
  • The end of the day. Open your calendar and look for a free slot for how long you need and pop it in there. 
  • A specific day this week. Mark as Priority 1 🔴 , add the deadline date, add a time tag (5 min, 15 min, 30 min etc) or label the task with how long you’ll need to complete it. 
  • At some point this week. Just mark as Priority 1 🔴 and add a time tag. Ask question 5.
  • A specific day this month. Mark it as Priority 2 🟠 and add the deadline.
  • At some point this month. Just mark it as priority 2 🟠. 
  • A date after this month. Just add a deadline.
  • Whenever. Add it to your ‘SOME DAY’ list.

I only add a time tag if I need to do an action this week. I review all of my projects every week (another story). So I will see these Priority 2 bad boys again, when their time comes. 

If it’s going to take me 5 days to complete a project or needed task, then I break it down into all of its parts. I tend to aim for 30 min to 1 hour tasks so I can easily fit it into a busy day. Just be mindful when you set a deadline. If you know something will take you three hours (which means six, obviously) then don’t mark the task with the day it’s due. You don’t have time to fit six hours of anything anywhere (time alas is not as elastic as I wish it was). Mark it a few days or weeks before. Finishing a project, in small chunks, earlier than needed, is the ultimate in stress-free living.

By doing the above I can then easily filter my tasks to see what I need to do. First I look at my calendar, then I look at the ‘Today’ section of my Task Management system (the place everything I’ve marked with today’s date filters to). Then I design my day based on my priorities (I’ll give you a little bit more to go on than that in a later installment).

Why digital not analogue?

With some written systems I’ve tried you’re encouraged to re-write tasks at a daily/weekly/monthly level that you haven’t finished. Moving them on to the next section. How demoralising is that? Especially if you have 1001 good ideas and no self awareness of time. Rewriting the same tasks I wasn’t getting to everyday was, at best, a waste of time, and at worst (no matter how much I did) demoralising, I couldn’t help but be confronted by all the things I hadn’t done. Sound familiar? This made me push to try and complete it all, in a mad rush at the end of every day, week and month, bleeding into my free time. But it was an impossible feat. Did I think that though? No. It was my fault I didn’t get to it, I must do better, I let myself down. Ad nauseum,until burn out, again.

If I have a project that will take me a week but that I noted down a month ago, I want to jump to it and add a note wherever I am. Not look it up in an index to find which page number it’s on and carry a heavy notebook everywhere. Or carry a small ‘capture’ notebook, then rewrite all my tasks when I get back to my ‘big’ notebook – waaaaaa!. Maybe I should slow down, maybe there’s a school of thought that if you can’t handle it written down then it’s too much to handle, but it’s different strokes for different folks.

This is not to say I don’t love the written word, I love my journal and write in it every day. I wish I could just write everything down in there, but then I can’t see the wood for the (pulped and processed) trees. Task management is quick, visually easy and I can view through a number of different filters quickly. 

Placing is tough, don’t give up Libby

Let me be honest. I do not write this from a place of absolute authority. I just thought by documenting my method, in a way it could make sense to others, that it would be clearer to me where the faults lie in my system. So this is a little exposing.

The placing process is where my system has broken down multiple times. It may break down again, but any system will break down if you try to do too much. I have been trying over a number of years to get to the place where it works, with minimal maintenance, and I can trust it. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as it can be, for me, for now.

It works on the bad days and the good days and that has to be a good thing, but it takes practice, trial, and many errors. For it to work, I had to become the kind of person who takes responsibility for being in control of my life, while not filling it to the brim. Tricky.

Next up is my Core Calendar process, where I block out time in my day for routines so I know how much time I really have spare. See you there!

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Summary

• Decide if your task is an event, a one off, the start of a new project or part of an existing project.
• Put events in your calendar, one off tasks on a list called Single Actions, and project tasks in a corresponding Project Section/List in your Task Management system.
• Keep all projects distinct, but order them in areas of responsibility so you can find them easily.
• Mark tasks with a date you need to complete or start them by
• Add one mark to the tasks you want to get done this week and another for this month  
• Think about how long the tasks you want to get done this week will take

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Free Stuff Time!

Oh how I love a bit of free stuff! If you’re starting out on your organizing journey, and you’re a pen and paper fan, I have a simple, beautiful To Do List and Blank Calendar Page for you to capture to. There’s two options. Option One, join the Free Designerating Membership, where in exchange for your email address you’ll have access to my Members’ Area (and download the printable files for free). Option Two, head to my Etsy page and support my work by buying the printable files. Click below on the option you like best.