A Calm Way to Deal With an Overflowing To-Do List

There is plenty of advice on managing a long list. Most of it adds a system, and the system becomes another thing on the list. This article goes the other way. It assumes the list is already too long, that you are tired, and that you would like to feel less flattened by Monday.

The approach is small and plain: note what is there, pick the next step that is yours, and take it. The people in the examples come from my book Noted. Next., and so do the quotations.

Why the list feels so heavy

Monday, eight in the morning. Priya, a project manager, has written her list for the week and it runs to two pages. Supplier contract, quarterly review, the dentist, her mum's birthday present, the warehouse audit, the shelf in the spare room that has been leaning since spring. She looks at it and feels the whole weight at once, like being handed every box in a removals van at the same moment.

No item on the list is the trouble. The trouble is reading all of them together. A tired or worried mind turns "what next?" into "everything", and everything cannot be done at ten past eight.

Open tasks also keep asking for attention when you are not working on them. Tom, a joiner, has nine jobs in his workshop. All are moving and none is moving fast, and he drives home every evening carrying all nine in his head. The worries that circle at night are usually the ones without a next step attached.

So the first move is not a clever way of ordering the list. It is to stop arguing with the fact that it is long. Say it plainly, in under ten words: the list is two pages. Noted. Then turn to what comes next.

Most of your list is outcomes, not steps

Tom has had the same item on his mental list for three months. It says: sort out the money.

"Sort out the money" is not a step. It is a weather system.

It has never been done because it cannot be done. It is an outcome pretending to be a step. A task you keep postponing is very often this kind of item.

The test is simple. Could you film yourself doing it in ten minutes? "Sort out the money" fails. "Send a polite second reminder about the unpaid wardrobe invoice" passes. Often the actual problem, shrunk to its bones, needs one phone call.

Go down your list and mark the items that fail the filming test. For each, write the first physical action underneath. If it still looks large, shrink it again, until the first rung is small enough to be faintly silly. When a task keeps not starting, the task is usually too big. You are not too weak.

The plan is not lazy. It is enormous. And enormous plans are very easy to admire and very hard to start.

Write it down, circle one, sort the rest

A list held in your head gets replayed. A list on paper can be closed.

Dorota, a retired maths teacher, keeps a small squared notebook by the kettle. Open matters go in it, each with a next action and a day. Then she closes the book. The loop is not finished, but it has somewhere to live that is not her head at three in the morning.

Try it tonight:

1. Write down every open task, large and small, work and home.
2. Next to each, write the next action and a day.
3. Circle one. Turn the page over until that one is moving.

For work in progress, a slightly wider version helps. List every open job, circle three, and move the rest to a Waiting list with dates. Fewer things, finished, will quieten your head more than many things nudged forward.

At the end of the day, write down three steps you actually took, however small. When the total is large, today's step can look pointless, and a short record is the evidence that it was not.

A good share of an overflowing list does not belong on it. A simple sort helps: three rooms. One holds what is yours. One holds what is theirs. One holds what is just weather, meaning things nobody in the conversation controls.

Dorota drew this as three boxes on the back of an envelope, the winter every problem in her flat seemed to arrive at once: the boiler, the pension forms, a neighbour's endless renovation, the price of everything. She posted each worry through the right door. Most of them, she says, were in the wrong house.

Run your list through the same question: mine, theirs or nobody's?

Yours keeps its place and gets a next step.

Theirs may still need one small action from you, such as asking, handing it back or saying you cannot. After that it is no longer yours to carry.

Weather gets noted and nothing more. A reorganisation, the economy and somebody else's mood are not tasks.

Your email deserves the same sorting. The unread number is a pile of requests from other people. It is not a verdict on you.

Start before you feel like it

Two habits keep a list long: waiting for a clear head, and waiting to feel like it.

Tom has been meaning to start his tax return since August. Each time he thinks about it he feels foggy, so he waits for the fog to lift. It is now late October and the fog has thickened. Sam, a founder, waits to be "in the zone" before the hard part of his day and picks up his phone to get there. At twenty to ten he is not in the zone.

The feeling usually arrives after the start. So choose one physical motion that begins the task, such as opening the file or finding the letter, and make it before you check how you feel.

For anything you have been avoiding, give it two honest minutes and then decide one of three things: finish it, book a time for it, or hand it on. The dread is usually bigger than the task.

Expect the useful step to be dull. When Tom worries about money he researches electric vans and sketches a new logo. It feels like action. The step that would help is a short email about an unpaid invoice. Do the dullest useful thing first.

If you really cannot see a next step, something specific is usually missing: information, energy, certainty or nerve. Name which one, and take the step that matches. Find out, rest, decide with what you have, or ask someone.

Stop the list refilling

A list that empties at one end and fills at the other never gets shorter. Three small defaults slow the intake.

The slow yes. Priya's boss catches her by the kettle and asks for the quarterly numbers. She hears herself say "Of course" before he has finished the sentence. The urge to agree on the spot is a reflex. It is not a decision. A workable reply: "Let me check and come back to you by three." Then do come back.

Set times for email. Priya opens her inbox on the tram, forty-one unread, and has replied to six and flagged nine by her stop.

She hasn't started work. Work has started her.

Turn off the unread badge on your phone and choose two set times a day to check.

One unbroken block. You rarely lack time for the work that matters. You lack unbroken time. Book one ninety-minute block this week and put the phone in another room.

What to take from this

• The weight comes from reading the whole list at once. Note that it is long, then stop arguing with it.
• If you could not film yourself doing it in ten minutes, it is an outcome. Write the first action underneath.
• Get every open loop onto paper with a next action and a day, then circle one.
• Ask of each item: mine, theirs or nobody's? Only the first kind needs carrying.
• Start with a physical motion, before you feel ready. Two minutes, then finish it, book it or hand it on.
• The step that helps is usually the dull one.
• Slow your yes, check email at set times, and protect one unbroken block a week.

If this was useful, Noted. Next.: The two-word habit that stops everything getting to you has the full version: 100 five-minute chapters on the two words, the Three Rooms, better defaults, work, the body and the harder days, each with a diagram and one small thing to do. It comes as a 313-page PDF and an EPUB, and costs £9 on Gumroad: matsiems.gumroad.com/l/noted-next. It is not therapy or medical advice.