Dec
27
Break the Evil Curse of Task List Categories
Posted under Productivity
I have a few task related questions for you to consider…
Do you keep a task list?
Do you put your tasks into categories?
Finally, have you ever caught yourself looking at your list confused about where to start?
What I discovered was I was spending a lot of time tweaking what task goes into which category. It sounded like a good plan. It seemed more organized grouping tasks into one of 20 categories. But it wasn’t more organized and efficient, it was less.
Here’s why. Except the time it takes to initially group tasks into the respective areas, there is another pitfall when it comes to looking at the list. When I was looking at my list, it wasn’t as much a list as it was an organized chaos. It was easy to skip over categories and not pay attention to those tasks.
The categories I did pay attention to gave me an opportunity to procrastinate. Here’s how. Let’s say I am working in my business category and the task was “Make a new logo.” That could easy go under the marketing category of business. Or it could go under the “blogging” category if I were to use the logo on the blog too. It could go under Photoshop if I had a Photoshop category. Do I need a Photoshop category now too?
So you can see, by upping the category ante, there is plenty of opportunity to procrastinate. Heck, it feels productive. “Look Ma! I’m categorizing my tasks!” Ultimately though, I have spent a lot of time NOT making the darn logo.
In my quest for task management bliss, I found myself altering my approach recently. I put my foot down on the number of categories for my tasks.
Where once I had upwards of 20 or so categories, I now have only 4. I scaled back everything to four simple categories: business, coding, personal or blog.
The names of my 4 categories can change over time. For instance if I sell my business I might change that category to “Daily beach activities” 
. But for now, I’m sticking with four and only four.
With just four categories, there’s no hemming and hawing. Not hand-wringing. If I have to take a dog to the vet, it goes to Personal - period. No subcategory of Personal > Dogs > Health. Can you see how this saves time on both the front end (task creation). And on the back end (task review/planning)
So ditch all those evil categories that are giving you an excuse to procrastinate. Come up with a reasonable number - say the number of fingers you have on one hand or fewer. You’ll be more organized and quicker to take action.
And that my friend is about the best we can expect from a task list.
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Comments
good advice - it’s better to get things done instead of spending time (procrastinating) organizing.
I’m in the middle of… well, actually I’m over two thirds of creating an online version of todotxt.com. It’s an online ‘command prompt’ in which you can add tasks and add projects (or categories if you will) to a task. Also you can add contexts to a task (as GTD suggests). So you can print a task lists belonging to a certain context (”show me all things I have to do on the phone”), a certain project or category, or both.
A pitfall I encounter is what you describe: you can easily add too many projects and contexts. I’m don’t know if I want to cap the number of projects and contexts per user though.
I’ll let you know when the tool is publicly available, I’m interested in hearing what you think about it.
I sort my tasks by the things necessary to complete them. Telephone, Office (means office suite - writing), Computer (coding, design etc), E-mail, Personal (meetings and errands) and (because I sync to PDA) Shopping. That way I just look at what I have at hand and do what I can. When I’m waiting somewhere, I look into telephone category and make some calls, or write some e-mails …
Premek, that sounds like David Allen’s tip. I tried that, but my work style didn’t adapt well to location based tasks namely because I am only in one place (at the computer. )
Good advice. I use tasklists to keep myself organized and have it down to 3 categories now — work, personal, and future tasks — on my main list. The work and personal are “do it right now” tasks and the “future tasks” eventually get moved into the work or personal lists when they become due.
I had a teacher tell me of the 4 category method to task planning. However it went my priority. 1. What needs to be done today? 2. What can be done tomorrow? 3. What can be done this week? 4. What has be done but not critical? (Like future goals)
BradTrupp, looks like you’ve got yours more optimized than mine ;)
seda, so what you are saying is that the 4 categories interfered with priorities? I’m not sure I understand. I agree you gotta be very careful about what you pick to do each day. Again, I suggest picking 6 or less major tasks each day to prevent confusion.
The categories are based on priority. More on time management. None of the tasks have to be related. Only when they need to be done.
ahh…I see so it’s simple for you then? Do you schedule these tasks?
Sort of. Only when using the first category. Since they have to be done today, I make them my priority and focus on these only. Some would think that this category would be full but you would be suprised when you spread them out throughout all 4.
My category system is fairly convoluted, but it sort of works. I keep my calendar under the old system I used to use based on Franklin Covey’s roles, and my tasks go under contexts which I got from David Allen’s GTD system. There is occasional crossover, such as when I schedule a task on my “hard landscape”, or when I input a task specifically for a role. Somehow it is working, but you’re right that a system like this can be confusing. I sync between 2 PCs with my Pocket PC, and I’ve learned that I can only assign one category per Outlook item unless I want ActiveSync to start duplicating entries.