There are a lot of people in different blogs, magazines and books giving directions on how to create efficient and effective lists. I am also giving you directions on how to create these lists; however I believe that the method I write about is more effective than most. The list making I prefer uses the “Getting Things Done” methodology, which sorts tasks into projects, with actions that need to be done for each project also listed.

The real questions that you must ask yourself to remain productive are: When is enough, enough? How many lists do I need to make to actually get something done, and when can I not make a list? This has always been a tough one for me to answer, until now. I recently read a passage from David Allen’s Making it all Work that laid the answers to these questions out using road maps as a comparison.

Tasks and Road Maps

The comparison that was drawn was as follows: ‘Road maps, and now days GPS, are not useful if you already know how to get to your destination. Road maps are useless when you don’t know where you are going. Road maps are not useful if you do not know where you are. Lastly, road maps are truly only useful if you know where you are, where you are going, and only need to know how to get there.’

So if you apply that logic to task management you should be able to keep yourself from getting lost. I will take you through map analogy and apply it to task management.

If you already know where you are going, and how to get there, be it in driving or with a task, you are simply wasting your time detailing it out in a task management situation. That is to say, if you need to take out the garbage you already know all the steps, so just writing “take out garbage” would be sufficient.

When you don’t know where you are going, be it on the road or with a task, a task management system is useless. It does not work because you have no task at hand, just like you would have no destination if you were driving. What this means is you can’t have a task or project that says “do the one thing you really need to do” unless you know what that one thing really is.

Likewise you not only need to know what your destination is, but from where you are coming. Translating that to task management, you would need to know where you are in a given project before you can plot your course to the completion of said project.

All of this is a long way of saying that to have an effective task management system you need to the following information:

1. Do you know where you are in the project?
2. Do you know where you are going with the project, or what is your ultimate goal?
3. Do you already know how to get to your goal?

Answering these questions will help you to define a task management system that best fits your needs. This means you won’t be needlessly wasting your time managing your tasks.

Below is an example list:

Staying on course

There will always be times when you need to take a pit stop and rest. Referring back to your task management system and using it as directions along your charted course will help you focus on the task at hand.

Related posts:

• The Achievable to-Do / Task List
• Take Small Bites by Starting Small
• Productive Breaks
• Focus Shifting
• iPhone & Productivity