Mention the movie “Groundhog Day” and everyone knows what you mean. The 1993 Bill Murray classic featured its star reliving the same day over and over. If you are like many, the time at home may make you think you are stuck in that movie. It’s a classic case of “Groundhog Day Syndrome.”
Our environment alone causes us to act. When it’s Sunday, we get up and go to church. We run errands with shopping list in hand. We visit a favorite restaurant.
When Monday rolls around, we’re in the car and off to work. We would complain about interruptions. However, the questions from coworkers provide “mini-deadlines” and keep us moving.
Without the places to go and the people to see, the days begin to run together. When the state reopens, what do we have to show for all the discretionary time we had?
The “Master List” and the “Daily List”
If tomorrow is to hold excitement, it will be because you built it today. When your eyelids open, what’s the thing that excites you? Let’s start by creating a “Master List.”
A “Master List” is everything you have to do now or in the future. The problem most people experience is that thoughts come and go. Trap it all in one place. If you’re new to the idea of a “Master List,” grab a legal pad and start writing down everything that comes to mind.
As new tasks come up during the day, add them to the list. Add the phone calls to return, phone calls you are expecting others to return to you, household projects, needed online orders, etc. Everything is in one place. Because you will be writing items on that list as soon as they occur to you, forgetting becomes a thing of the past.
Crafting tomorrow today
In the evening, look at the Master List. Pick some things for tomorrow. List them in the order you will do them. Word the tasks so they are easy to do. The idea is to make the list as attractive as possible.
Before retiring for the evening, look at the list. If you’ve crafted it correctly, you have a reason to get up and get going tomorrow.
What’s the best tool?
The best tool is the one you will use. For some people, a pocket memo pad is enough. Start from the back end with your Master List. Use the front page for the Daily List. In the evening, recopy anything you didn’t get done onto the next sheet and add a few things from the Master List.
For years, I used a paper planner. The two-page-per-day Day-Timer or Franklin Planner are good choices. Use pages in the back of the book for the Master List.
For almost 20 years, I have used a digital list. I presently use Remember The Milk. It allows me to forward emails to it and add tasks with my voice. I can add repeating tasks that automatically show up every week, every month, every year, or at any other interval. Finally, the digital list provides the freedom from ever having to rewrite anything.
No more “Groundhog Day Syndrome”
Regardless of the tool, the tactics are the same. First, have a place, a “Master List,” to trap everything you need to do. That way, you never have to worry about what you have forgotten. Second, review that Master List regularly. Pull the items onto your Daily List that lead to a day well-lived.
Colin McKenzie
April 21, 2020 4:13 pmThanks Frank. I always look forward to your emails and make a point of reading them. Like nearly everyone I guess, I get so many emails that I don’t read a lot of them – but yours are in my definitely will read group. I too use Remember The Milk – actually I switched from Toodledo because of your endorsement of RTM.
Anyway, keep up the good work and I hope you stay safe and well.
All the best … Colin McKenzie
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April 21, 2020 7:24 pmColin,
Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear that mine is a keeper in a sea of too many emails. Yep, Remember The Milk is a winner. Happy to hear you made the switch.
Steve Bearry
February 9, 2021 7:29 pmThanks, Frank. Do you have any content (blog or video) that goes over how you organize your tasks in RTM into various lists and/or tags? Also, how do you integrate the “Master Task List” into your digital apps? Is that an RTM or Evernote item? I’ve tried searching your site, but may be overlooking. Thanks!
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February 15, 2021 6:47 amSteve, take a look at this post: https://frankbuck.org/time-blocking/ The video is almost 30 minutes in length and gives a pretty good overview. In RTM, I don’t use lists. Everything gets a due date. I use the Priority field to break things down into the parts of the day: Priority 1 = “5Fab 5.” Priority 2 = Morning. Priority 3 = Afternoon. Priority 4 = Evening. Anything left undone rolls to the next day (automatically) and to the same part of the day.
I think of my “Master List” in terms of things I would like to accomplish during the coming week and another for things I would like to accomplish sometime during the month. I schedule the first group for Saturday and the second for the last day of the month. I know I can always the “This Week” button and scroll to Saturday to grab some items. When Saturday arrives, I will be seeing anything not already done. I will reschedule dates for some of them to specific dates in the coming week and reschedule the rest in mass for the next Saturday.
At the end of the month, I will automatically see “Master List” tasks since the due date will have arrived and they will be front-and-center. I will schedule some for specific days, schedule others for an upcoming Saturday, and roll the rest forward a month.
RTM does have the “All Tasks” button. That in itself could serve as a Master List.
I have recently begun using tags. I have always included key words in tasks and used those to search. For example, if I am expecting to receive an order from a company, a return phone call from someone, return of materials someone borrowed, etc., I put “ETR” in the name of the task and assign a date of when I want to see that item again. At any point, I could search for “ETR” and find any of those items. I have transitioned to using tags for the common things I found myself searching for (#ETR, my wife’s name for things to talk to her about, “#Read” for articles to read during spare time, “#ConstantContact” for items related to my weekly email list). The main reasons initially was fewer keystrokes and, elimination of false positives (such as the characters “read” appearing in a task related to something other than reading an article) and the elimination of misspelling preventing something from coming up in search. When I enter the pound sign and the first letter of the tag, it autocompletes, so it’s quicker. Instead of searching, I can now click on the desired tag in the list on the left.
One other improvement in my workflow is creating my own sort (which you can do with the Pro Version of Remember The Milk). I had been sorting by Priority. The sort I created sorts first by Priority and then by tag. That puts like items together. Instead of things to talk to my wife about spread throughout the “evening” (Priority 4) part of today’s list (which was pretty good to start with), they are all grouped one after the other within that evening section.
I have not written about the tagging aspect yet. I am planning a series of videos on Remember The Milk, each of which focusing on one specific aspect (such as tagging).