Gearing Up with the Daily Grind List

If you manage a to-do list to keep track of your tasks, I'd like to introduce a technique I've been using that you may find useful. Think of it as an alternate take on "parking on a downhill slope."

If you don't know that term, it refers to stopping just shy of completing a task at the end of the day, such that, in the morning, you can effortlessly top it off. Having thus begun with accomplishment, it will be easy to keep rolling. Inertia and such.

My alternate technique is a list I call the "Daily Grind". I use Things to manage my tasks. (Possible neologism: "I'm a Thinger"). One of my favorite features is the ability to go through next actions, and hand-pick the ones to be done today. These then appear in a pre-set list.

A recent build of Things added repeating tasks and projects. So it's possible to create a project full of tasks, and schedule a copy of that project to appear in the Today list automatically.

I made myself a list of stupidly easy tasks, the sort of things I usually do anyway, but sometimes don't. For instance, I sometimes forget to check for new episodes of The Daily Show, and I sometimes forget to update my podcasts. Sometimes I leave my power adapter at work.

I gathered this random assortment into one list, and set it to show up each morning. About half the tasks are start-of-day tasks, and half are end-of-day. All of the tasks can be completed every day.

There are two benefits to this practice. Much like normal downhill-slope planning, the grind offers you an easy win with which to start the day. The geek in me gets a little thrill every time a box is checked, but many of the tasks I work on can take days to reach the check-off point. The daily grind gives me a chance to score a little victory right away, every day.

Even better, taking the ten seconds to mark off those tasks puts you into the to-doing state of mind. Accomplishment becomes the order of the day, and in visiting your to-dos, you can now review the other items.

Secondly, a central tenant David Allen hits on with GTD is the need to put everything in your trusted system, and then trust the system. Everything means every thing. Each time I forget to pack the power adapter, not only is my computer time curtailed, but I also lose a dab of trust in my system.

By concretizing these stupid little tasks, I'm preventing that loss of trust. I can feel increasingly comfortable with my system, which means I can spend the rest of my time on more interesting topics.