A task workflow that actually works. That’s what we’re talking about today.

I have a challenge for you. Rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time. Give it a try.

Each one is easy to do. Trying to do two different things at the same time turns “easy” into “hard.” And that’s what we do all day long.

Three Phases of Workflow

Whether we’re talking about a paper organizing system from the 1980s or a modern digital system, your work can be divided into three phases:

1. Trap it
2. Organize it
3. Do the work.

Keep them separate and we keep easy things easy. Mix them up and what could be easy becomes hard.

We’re going to look at this today through the lens of your digital task manager. I use Remember The Milk. The principles remain the same regardless of the specific piece of software.

Trap

When new information comes your way, your responsibility is to trap it so it doesn’t get away. For me, this looks like being in the middle of something when an idea comes to mind, someone walks in the door with a request, or the phone rings, and the results of that call are additions to my task list.

At my computer, I hit a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Alt + M on Windows). A little window opens for me to enter the task. If I’m not in front of my computer, I grab my phone, touch the microphone icon in the Remember The Milk widget, and speak. When I finish, I save the task.

In either case, I earn the right to forget about the task. And that is my hope for you, that you can learn to do it too. That way, I can get back to doing what I was doing with 100% confidence that nothing will fall through the cracks.

Have you ever been to the circus and seen the lion tamer who is keeping the lion at bay with a chair? Do we really think that flimsy chair is going to save anybody? One whack with a paw would tear it to pieces.

The four legs of the chair force the lion to try to focus on four different things at once. He freezes. Do you ever feel like that lion, trying to focus on four different things at once and not doing a good job with any of them? The ability to focus on one thing means being able to set aside everything else.

Organize

“Trapping” your tasks is about getting it down. The next step, “Organizing,” is about getting it right. In the evening, and often in the middle of the day as well, I look at the Remember The Milk inbox. There is everything I’ve thrown at Remember The Milk.

During the day, I’m not all that worried about putting the right due date on tasks or applying tags or even wording the tasks clearly. My job during the heat of the battle is to trap things so they don’t get away. During this second phase, it’s all about getting the wording crystal clear. When it comes time to do the task, I know exactly what to do. It’s about putting a date on that task that corresponds to when I want to see it again. That way, tasks are out of the way until I want to see them and then front and center when I do want to see them. I apply a priority to each task so that it segments the day into my “Fab 5,” morning, afternoon, and evening. I apply tags so that similar items are batched together.

And when I am organizing, I’m organizing. As new stuff arrives, it waits. It waits in email. It goes right into the Remember The Milk inbox to wait its turn. When everything in the inbox is organized, it moves from the Inbox list to the Organized list where all tasks reside.

It’s often helpful to have reference material in a notetaking tool. You could create a note in Evernote and insert the link to that note in the appropriate tasks. Another option is to create a Canva Action Plan. This tool helps visualize priorities and streamline your workflow, ensuring your tasks are actionable and aligned with your goals.

Do

“Trapping” is about getting it down. “Organizing” is about getting it right. “Doing” is about getting it done. I’m armed with a list where tasks are worded clearly. It’s all in a logical order. I can get to work and you can too. New tasks come in and we trap them and keep going. Because when your doing, you’re doing. We’re not going back and forth handling every little interruption. We’ll organize them later. We’ll do them after that. It all flows like clockwork.

If you do it any other way, if you stop and handle every little thing as it comes up, little things just keep coming up. The work you had planned just keeps getting pushed back and pushed back until what was a small thing two weeks ago becomes the crisis of today.

So where can you find out more about this idea? I’ve talked about it for many years. In Get Organized Digitally! I devoted a chapter to it, Chapter 3. I’ve written an ebook on using Remember The Milk. You can have that ebook today. Go to DrFrankBuck.gumroad.com to purchase it. Or you can come to my website, FrankBuck.org and join the email list. That way you get it for free. 

You’ll have to wait a couple of days because you’re going to get another gift first. That one’s going to get your desk clean, but that’s another story.

Trapping gets it down. Organizing gets it right. Doing gets it done.