Seven Ways to Tame a List

Things to do today include exploring the history of the to-do list (alternate link). You’ll find that they were famously used by Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, among other high achievers of history. Below are some more modern approaches to to-do lists to explore—or even try Which format seems best to you?

Eisenhower Method | 1-2-3 Method | Ivy Lee Method
4-D Method | Eat that Frog | Must-Do | Bullet Journal

Benjamin Franklin ran his days off a hand-ruled chart of thirteen virtues. Centuries earlier, Leonardo filled a notebook page with errands — from surveying a city to describing a woodpecker's tongue.

Key concepts

Goal Conflict: Two goals that each look sensible can make the other impossible. Franklin's Order told him to keep a rigid daily schedule; his Industry told him to drop it the moment a client walked in, and his Frugality — mend your own clothes, cook your own meals — ate the hours both of them needed. A list usually fails here, not from laziness.
Next Actions: The move from an abstract goal to the specific physical step you could do next. David Allen taught the comedian Drew Carey to work from next steps rather than big ambitions, because a vague goal keeps surfacing in the back of your mind while a concrete step can actually be finished.

Every work — at a glance

Eisenhower Method (method)

Score every task on two axes, urgent and important, then do it now, schedule it, delegate it, or delete it — from a line Eisenhower quoted in 1954 that the urgent and the important are rarely the same thing, which Stephen Covey later drew as a four-box grid.
1-2-3 Method (method)

Three tasks a day, picked before the day starts — usually one large and two small — so the cap itself forces you to say out loud what gets left off.
Ivy Lee Method (method)

In 1918 the publicist Ivy Lee told Bethlehem Steel's executives to write tomorrow's six most important tasks in priority order and work them strictly one at a time; Charles Schwab reportedly paid $25,000 for the advice.
4-D Method (method)

Every task gets one of four verbs the moment it reaches you — Do it if it is quick, Defer it to a specific time, Delegate it, or Delete it — and the fourth is the one almost nobody can perform.
Eat That Frog — Brian Tracy (method)

Do the ugliest, most postponed task first, from a line usually credited to Mark Twain that if you eat a live frog each morning nothing worse can happen all day; Brian Tracy's 1993 book turned the quip into a method.
Must-Do (method)

Name only the one to three things that are genuinely non-negotiable today and demote everything else to optional, so the day becomes pass or fail instead of an open tab.
Bullet Journal — Ryder Carroll (method)

An analog notebook system of rapid symbols — a dot for a task, a circle for an event — with a monthly migration in which unfinished items must be re-copied by hand, so anything not worth re-writing quietly exposes itself.

What to know

01
Every method here is subtraction, not storage: Eisenhower deletes a whole quadrant, Ivy Lee stops at six, Must-Do names three, the Bullet Journal makes each survivor earn a re-write. The purest version comes from a general at a Pentagon workshop, asked to sum up her strategy in 25 words: 'First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.'

Across subjects

Aviation flipped the tool. After a Boeing bomber crashed in 1935, too complex to fly from memory, pilots invented the checklist — short, fixed, mandatory — and surgeons later copied it. A to-do list is made to be argued with; a checklist is made so nobody decides what to skip.

Theme connection

Crossing off the last item just means the list was too short. Which format is best? One side says hunting for the perfect system is procrastination — the best list is the one you'll keep. The other says the format shapes what you notice: Eisenhower weighs importance, the Bullet Journal makes each task earn its place.

Practice

Check what you've read

Pick the best answer — you'll see why each option is right or wrong.

Question 1 of 2

SPCWhat is the name for the productivity method of doing your hardest task first each morning?

Question 2 of 2

SPCA student is paralyzed by a 40-item to-do list. Which method would you tell them to try first?