How To: Create A Master To-Do List.

So you either love lists or hate lists, right? (I secretly hope it’s love!) For me, I love them and I found a system about a year ago that worked amazingly for me when it comes to long-term projects, so I wanted to share it in today’s post.

What is a master to-do list? How did I discover it?

A master to-do list is a list of tasks that need to be completed but aren’t seen as tasks that you would put on your weekly or monthly to-do list.

It’s a method I discovered through one of my favourite YouTubers, Muchelle B, who I’ve spoken about before. In this video, she does a walk through of her entire Notion workspace and in this, she talks about her master to-do list, and from there, I knew it would also be perfect in my little space too.

Give yourself a specific amount of time.

As a former list addict, and I’m sure that’s not the official title, but I was very obsessed with them in a very unhealthy way, it’s important to know that creating this master to-do list should not take all day. It doesn’t need to take all day, and especially if you’re able to work on it in one go. However, if you need to take it step-by-step throughout the day; maybe you work on it over one of your lunch breaks, and you give it another think around dinner time, that’s really great but just know, that this shouldn’t take up your entire day. Setting a specific amount of time works really great for me, and I know that I have the ability to work on it after that point, but setting that amount in the first place, is a great first step in getting the majority of the tasks done.

Walk around each room of the house.

This makes perfect sense to me, but I can understand why it may not to everyone else. I don’t have the greatest memory and almost everyone who knows me, will know this so going around room by room first to find out what I need to add to my list, is absolutely perfect for me. From this, I can identify what I need to add to my “regular” to do list, and what needs added to my “master” to do list. The waste bin needs emptied in the bathroom, that will go to my “regular” to-do list, but wanting to buy additional storage space would be on my “master” list.

Go through all your notebooks and phone notes.

We’re very lucky now to have so many options to put our notes in; various notebooks scattered around our house, in our office, on countless apps on our phone or any piece of technology that we use. As amazing as all these outlets are, our notes and reminders can often get lost and never looked at again; while it might be time consuming to look through all these avenues, you’ll find out if there’s something you need replacing that you completely forgot about or if not, at least you’ll clear up some space, digitally or physically.

What I found was the easiest way to manage this, was when I found a task that I knew needed doing, either when I was walking around room to room or I was going through various notebooks, I wrote it down really quickly on the simplest place I could find. For me, that was either my laptop or my phone, but on my laptop, I was able to pop open a Microsoft Word document and type them down relatively fast.

Put it into one system.

Putting all of your to-do’s into one system may seem slightly overwhelming, but it’s going to be much more effective than either having to go to four different lists anywhere and everywhere or having sticky notes scattered round the place. It will be so much tidier, easier to manage, and you’ll be able to have this one list to focus on, which will help with mental clutter too.

I am a huge advocate for Notion, I absolutely love it and it’s the perfect system for me. It’s likened very much to a digital version of bullet journals, which I did try back in the day but I was so obsessed with making everything perfect without a single mistake (it’s a very difficult habit to kick, I’ll be the first to admit it), having a digital version that I could re-do in a matter of seconds, made much more sense to me. So once I had completed my list on Microsoft Word, I would start transferring it to my preferred system.

Decide how high a priority it is.

How important is it to finish off painting the skirting board in your office? How important is it to get that passport form sent off? Is it really necessary to organise your nail polish collection or can that wait a little while?

And yes, all three of these tasks were on my master to-do list at some point, because they weren’t something I needed to work on right away, but they did have their priorities.

I have five main priorities; low, medium, high, urgent and N/A. N/A has been used for all my wedding list tasks because nothing is very urgent right now, and it makes sense to have them all set as not applicable for the mean time. All the other priorities are pretty self explanatory.

Categorise.

In order for your list not to be one giant list that absolutely terrifies you and makes you not want to ever look at it again, it’s a really good idea to categorise it into how you see fit. Maybe setting it up for tasks in your home, your office, your car and your outside interests; that might suit your lifestyle and your needs. For me; I set mine up as follows: appointments, hobbies, holiday, home, maintenance, other, purchases, wedding and work. Does it seem like a lot? Yes, yes it does but I don’t want to overflow any category with something that doesn’t really fit.

Make sure you revisit your list regularly.

One big problem with lists of this size, is that we can often make them, look at them for a while and then forget about it. What we want to do with this list in particular is keep coming back to it, check tasks off, add new ones on, and because we’re categorising it, you can focus on one or two sections so it will be less overwhelming. Make sure you have it in a place that is visible but not something you’re going to look at every five minutes, because that will be unnecessary and quite frankly, overwhelming, especially if you know you won’t be able to get everything done right there and then.

• • •

I wanted to share an example or two from my own Master To-Do list, to show you that it can be fairly easy to keep it up to date. In order to keep it as organised as possible, I match the emoji with the category (so a little present under “gifts” and a shopping trolley under “purchases”) and my priority list is colour coordinated (of course, not mandatory and really just fits how I like to organise my lists).

Normally I will add in the date that it’s been completed, and I have it set up as a filter to clear it from this list and move it to my “completed tasks” list as soon as I tick the tick box.

Here’s an example of one category that I have been able to focus on it’s own (don’t worry, there’s LOTS of tasks in this one category that aren’t shown here) and it will be easier to keep track of because this is taking place over two or so years. However, when I look at my list as a whole, I tend to hide the “wedding” category because a lot of the tasks that haven’t been ticked off yet, won’t be able to be done so for quite a long period of time.

• • •

There’s no denying that creating a list that covers most areas of your life, will probably be a little overwhelming at first, but that’s very normal and totally understandable. Once you’re able to categorise everything, and most importantly, start ticking off those tasks one by one, then it all becomes easier. As always, if this method doesn’t work for you, that’s okay too; this is just what works for me and everyone will find their own way in which they like to do things.

Thank you for reading today’s post and if you have any other similar methods that you think I would like, feel free to get in touch on my socials.

Have a fantastic week! 🌻