How to Remember to Check Your To-Do List

Your to-do list is organized. The tasks are there. You may even have spent some time choosing the right app.

Then the day happens, and you forget to open it.

A useful place to start is choosing a specific moment to look at your list. Connect that review to something you already do, keep the list easy to reach, and make the next task clear enough to act on.

Choose when the list should appear

“Check my tasks more often” leaves you responsible for remembering another task.

Try attaching the review to an event you can recognize:

• When you sit down to begin work.
• When you finish a meeting.
• When you complete the task you’re currently doing.

Choose a moment where seeing your list would help you make the next decision.

For example, after a meeting, you might review what changed before reopening the work you had planned. After finishing a task, you might choose the next one before opening another browser tab.

You can also put a review on your calendar if you need a prompt at a particular time. Start with one useful review point and see whether it fits your day.

Make the list easy to reach

Notice how much effort it takes to see your tasks.

Perhaps the list lives in a notebook you leave in another room. Perhaps the app is buried behind several windows. Perhaps you have several lists and aren’t sure which one contains today’s work.

Try keeping the relevant list beside the place where you do that work: a notebook on the desk, an open window, or a bookmark you can reach directly.

You don’t have to move every idea, project and reference into one giant list. You do need to know where to look for the work you’re choosing between now.

Write tasks you can recognize and start

Once you open the list, what does it ask you to do?

“Website,” “assignment” and “client work” might describe substantial projects. They leave the first action for you to work out.

Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning recommends distinguishing projects from tasks and identifying the actions involved in completing them. Keeping To-Do Lists

Here are some illustrative rewrites:

• “Website” becomes “Draft the three answers for the pricing FAQ.”
• “Assignment” becomes “Find two sources for the opening argument.”
• “Client work” becomes “Send the revised mockup for approval.”

Keep supporting details with the task. A short note about the document, missing information or next decision can make the list understandable when you return later.

If a task depends on someone else, record that dependency. Repeatedly looking at an action you cannot currently take won’t resolve the missing input.

Use a familiar browsing habit as another reminder

You might forget to open your task list while reliably remembering how to reach Reddit or YouTube.

That’s the situation Caliph is built around. Its Chrome extension brings up your saved tasks when you open a website you’ve selected. Your browsing habit becomes an occasion to see what you intended to do. From there, you can choose a task and set up a focus session, or deliberately continue to the website. Meet Caliph

This gives the list another place to appear during your day. It also makes the quality of the tasks on that list matter: they should describe work you still intend to do.

Make the next review manageable

If you haven’t checked your list for a while, begin by making it current.

Remove tasks you no longer intend to do. Update anything whose circumstances have changed. Choose one action that is possible now.

Then decide when you’ll look again.

You can try this with your existing list today: choose a review moment, put the list within reach, and rewrite one vague item into an action you can begin.