I have major issues around obligation. I feel stressed out and burdened when I feel that I have lots of pending obligations.

I feel especially bogged down by to-do lists. I accumulate to-do items any time I think “Wouldn’t it be cool if”, and even though I put them low down on the list, the length of the list quickly begins to stress me out.

The Could-Do List

Oh! I can separate my to-do list into a to-do list and a could-do list. Could-do items are things that it might be a good idea to do, but nothing bad will happen if I don’t. I might miss an opportunity for something good, but I won’t bring about anything bad by letting it sit.

To-do items are obligations. Could-do items are opportunities.

So, Kyeli and I edited each of our project pages to have two lists on it, a to-do list and a could-do list. We like it a lot. (:

This one simple change has vastly increased my happiness and my productivity. Now I can knock my to-do items off quickly, then move on to the fun pile of awesome things that I could do.

P.S. Oh, hey, look at this. I’m not the first one to come up with the idea of a “could-do” list, but they suggest simply renaming all your “to-do” items to “could-do”. I’m all for reducing obligation, but that sounds like sticking your fingers in your ears to me. (:

Until last week, I used Remember The Milk to keep track of my to-do lists. We’ve posted before about how to get organized, but recently I realized that my system was stressing me out more than helping me, so I’ve switched.

What I noticed was that when planning a new project, I created a text file instead of putting it into Remember The Milk. Kyeli and I have a schedule of what types of tasks to do on each day, so I didn’t even look at Remember The Milk anymore. It had become stale and irrelevant. I had a schedule and a bunch of text files.

Observe, don’t judge.

When trying to be awesome, it helps to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

This means to look objectively at what you’re doing rather than judging it. “Descriptive” means to describe what is actually happening, either out loud or in your head. “Prescriptive” means “telling what to do”, as in when a doctor prescribes medicine to you, she tells you what drugs to take, when, and how much.

I had been stuck in prescribing Remember The Milk to myself instead of describing what I was actually doing.

Ask why.

I looked at what I was doing, and I realized that I was avoiding Remember The Milk because it wasn’t easy to use for me. I couldn’t order the items in the list as I liked, I couldn’t cut and paste easily, I couldn’t edit and reorganize easily. Apparently that was important enough to me that I’d rather have ease of editing than all the other features of Remember The Milk.

One thing that I used to like about Remember The Milk back when I was using it was the email reminders. If there’s a time-sensitive task, I want to be reminded of it. If it’s sitting in a text file somewhere, I might forget about it.

Get to the root.

Kyeli and I talked about this, and eventually I figured out that what I need in a to-do system is:

• easy to edit
• easy to share
• easy to store and find information
• a way to keep on top of time-sensitive things

We decided to completely ditch Remember The Milk in favor of MediaWiki + a schedule.

What? A wiki?

A wiki (any wiki will do, I’m just partial to MediaWiki because I like Wikipedia) is easy to edit, easy to share (no more “but that file is on your laptop, I can’t get to it”), and easy to store and find information on. Far easier than a bunch of text files, because it has hyperlinks, which are even more flexible than nested folders.

To keep from getting overwhelmed with a huge pile of scattered to-do items, we created one main page on our wiki that lists our weekly schedule.

• Monday: current project
• Tuesday: conversion + tribe building + website
• Wednesday: learning + planning
• Thursday: blog + newsletter + coffee house
• Friday: misc + catch-up

Each of the daily items is a link to a “project page”: a wiki page with that project’s to-do items on it. All to-do items live on a project page; we don’t ever put to-do items on just any old random wiki page.

This is far better than having one huge honking to-do list, or even one huge honking to-do list separated by subheaders. The advantage is that each day, we only have to look at a to-do list of a manageable size, because we’re only thinking about one or two or three projects each day. The rest can wait until their day comes. Of course there are always urgent things that need to be done quickly, but most things can wait up to a week.

On each project page, we put the to-do items with deadlines at the top of the list, with the deadline in bold. At the beginning of the work day, we review the project to-lists for the day’s projects, and we make sure to complete all the tasks that are due within the next 7 days.

Any to-do list is useless if you never look at it.

Of course this system wouldn’t work if we didn’t stick to it, but it’s been pretty easy to stick to so far. We like the wiki, so we like to look at it and update it throughout the day. We use it for storing information as well as to-do items. And most importantly, we established a routine. Each day, we say to each other “What are we going to do today?” and we look at the wiki together. It’s working really well!

In fact, it’s working so well that I’ve gotten down to zero emails in my inbox for the first time in… EVER. I’ve had an email address for 14 years, and this is the first time I’ve had a to-do system so good that I didn’t need to store to-do items in my inbox as well.

How To Be Awesome

While I was working on all this to-do list stuff, I realized that the pattern I used to work through it was pretty much the same pattern I use for self-work, for relationship issues, for business decisions, and all sorts of other stuff.

1. Notice that something isn’t right or could be better.
2. Observe without judgement.
3. Keep asking why until you get to the root.
4. Come up with a solution to the root problem.
5. See how it goes!

This is part 2 of 3 of our How to get organized series of posts, inspired by reading Getting Things Done. There were three points David Allen made in the book that totally rocked my world. Each of them is interesting enough to get its own post.

Point #1 was: get your to-do list out of your head.

We filled an entire coffee table full of post-it notes, and since then we’ve helped three friends figure out a good process for doing it themselves. They used poster board instead of a table, though. That was pretty smart. I wish we had thought to do that. (;

So now you’ve got a coffee table or poster board full of post-it notes, and all your to-do items are out of your head. That’s a great start! The next step is to turn your brainsplosion into a pretty tree.

Organize your post-its based on what goal they help you achieve. Organize them based on which things you need to do first before you can work on other things. Sort them based on when you want or need to get them done. I like to build a tree, a pretty dependency tree. It starts with the next thing to do, and then grows down (I’m a computer scientist, my trees grow down) and branches out into the new things that I can do after I finish those prerequisites. But however you do it, do it in a way that makes sense to you, not to me. This will be useful for step three (coming up tomorrow!).

Now that you have a pretty tree or spiral or matrix or whatever organizational layout works for you, we’re going to take our tree and plant it firmly in the ground.

To do this, all you need to do is ask yourself the following four words:

“What’s the next action?”

These four words will completely change the way you organize your life.

So, we’re looking at our pretty tree of post-its, and on some of the branches we have stuff like:

• book signing
• spend more quality time with Kyeli
• blog posts
• launch website

…and so on. For each one of these items, ask yourself the question “What’s the next action?”

For book signing the next action was “Call Book People about the book signing: Return Rebecca’s call at 512-xxx-xxxx”.

For spend more quality time with Kyeli the next action was “Talk with Kyeli about our schedules and about what we each feel is quality time.”

For blog posts the next action was “Set up a daily reminder to make a blog post.”

For launch website the next action was “Schedule a meeting with Kyeli and Megan to discuss what we need to do to launch the website.” No, “schedule” isn’t an action. Even better: “Email Megan and talk to Kyeli to pick a time for a meeting to discuss what we need to do to launch the website.” “Email” is a much more concrete action than “schedule”.

Now check out the revised version of the to-do list:

• Call Book People about the book signing: Return Rebecca’s call at 512-xxx-xxxx
• Talk with Kyeli about our schedules and about what we each feel is quality time
• Set up a daily reminder to make a blog post
• Email Megan and talk to Kyeli to pick a time for a meeting to discuss what we need to do to launch the website

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot better about the second version of the to-do list. I can imagine myself staring at the first one, thinking about how daunting it feels and how vague and intimidating it is. I can imagine myself flailing, thinking over and over again, “Website launch? Yeah, let’s do that. It’s going to be big and complicated. Spend more quality time with Kyeli? Yeah, that’s a really good idea. Let’s do that.” I’m thinking round and round in circles, but I’m not getting anything done because it seems too overwhelming. Maybe I’ll make a blog post, but then I’ll forget to blog tomorrow.

The second to-do list is concrete. It’s full of things that I can do. I can call this number. I can talk to Kyeli. I can set this thing up. I can send this email. No worries, no stress! Then when I complete that item, I ask myself again, “What’s the next action to complete this task?” Then I add that next action to the list.

In summary, here are the two things you do after you have a brainsplosion of post-it notes all over your coffee table. You turn your brainsplosion into a pretty tree, organized and sorted however makes sense to you, and then you plant your tree in the ground by asking yourself “What’s the next action?”

Enjoy your pretty tree! (:

Usually, our place is clean and tidy. We’ve got lots of stacking bins that make a couple of tall and a couple of short towers in various places – these keep our stuff organized and out of the way, gives everything a place to live off the floor and the tables. We’ve got a neat box of drawers that holds our smaller things, like dice and nails and pens. We’ve got a big dresser-like tabley thing where we store our tools and lockbox, photos and laundry essentials. We mounted a neat bar-and-shelf thingie from Ikea to our kitchen wall, to free up our minimal counter space.

We have “hardwood” floors, so we got lots of rugs to help keep the floors cleaner and more comfy for our bare feet. We brought a laundry basket downstairs for those errant, end-of-day socks that would scatter everywhere. We have a cork board and push-pins for outgoing mail and memos, a whiteboard for shorter messages and budget tallies, a mounted rack for our DVDs and video games, and trash cans in lots of places. Everything has a place, and everything goes in its place.

However, right now, my environment is stressing me out.

Our house is messy. There are several boxes strewn about. Our tables are covered with stuff. Our floor is unswept. Some of our handy dandy organizer bins are overflowing, particularly the one right next to my spot on the couch, making the mess in my personal space. We have some new things that don’t yet have places to live, so they’re strewn about in inconvenient (and sometimes painful) places. There are visible cords now, because we got Rock Band and the drums and microphones connect to the Wii in the front. Our bathrooms are dirty, and both our toilet seats are broken. I got a couple of new kitchen gadgets, so now the counters are too crowded.

On top of this, my brother is coming to stay for a few days on Wednesday, and we’re having a party on Saturday (Pace’s birthday is next week!).

I forget how important a clean and organized environment is to my ability to work and function until I’m overwhelmed and in tears. Then I take a deep breath, look around, and realize that the place is a mess! Since we work here as well as live here, I’m in this habitat nearly all day, every day. That’s a lot of time to be in an environment that’s causing stress!

So, it’s time to go back to the Container Store, time to head to Target. Fix those broken things, get another bin or two, find homes for that new stuff. Get the floor swept and another rug to help manage the mess. Maybe a trip to Ikea for a few more mountable kitchen space savers. Time to evaluate the stress and get the mess under control.

Having a clean, organized environment helps me focus on the blog, the Usual Error Project, my son, my wife, and myself. When it gets too messy, too out of control, the stress builds and becomes a major distraction. We recommend trying out a few organizational systems and seeing what helps your environment become more relaxing and peaceful, and what helps you to better focus on your priorities!