Keeping to-do lists

When you have a number of things going on at the same time, stuff at home, stuff at work and personal stuff to do, lists are an essential part so that you don't fall behind.

This is especially important if you manage a cross-functional team, where you're not the expert.

In my old job, I managed software developers and computer network installation and support teams. The skills required are not the same, though to anyone not in the business, a computer guy is a computer guy.

Now I manage a couple of businesses. One dealing with homes and tenants. The other with farms and crop production. I'm no expert in either, and to be fair, most of the actual team members don't have a global outlook, but are good within their swimming lanes.

There are many small things going on. Rent collection, home repairs, working with surveyors, lawyers, auditors, the tax agency. Working with suppliers, contractors and other consultants. And on the farm side, casual labourers and unskilled workers. Agricultural products suppliers. Managing crop cycles and monitoring farm health.

It's nothing like the computer world that I was so familiar with. And so lists and note taking have become my world. Not only so that I don't forget to keep track. But also as a mechanism for learning.

THE ONE BIG LIST

In my old world, it was easy to keep one list of everything that's going on and what everyone was doing. The same list contained what I was supposed to do with respect to the budget, as well as who was working on what bug in whatever software product we were looking at. The main problem with this list is that it grew exponentially. Stuff could remain on the list for months, and because it was literally a manual list, in an A6 notebook, I had to keep flipping back and forth. If an item dropped more than a few pages back, I brought it to the front of the list.

There was no concept, back then, of assigning a date to a list item. It was just a to-do item. I didn't even put dates on when some of the stuff was supposed to be completed.

The point was simply not to forget it.

So that's a start, but the main problem with the big list is once it starts growing. From a few items, to a page, to two pages and so on. Some items are so old, they seem like they'll never be done, but I can't take them off the list for fear of losing them.

So they stay.

And the list becomes unmanageable and useless.

MANY SMALL LISTS

In my new world, I keep many lists. A list for groceries, a separate list for each business, and within each business, lists for various things. There are even lists for each employee. Lists of stuff I've asked them to do, so that I don't forget it. And of course, there's a list of my plans, my projects and even this blog.

And how's that working out, you may ask?

Decidedly better than the single list, but not great.

Now I have a table of contents, which lists my lists, and reminds me to check each of the lists. And so frequently during the day, I pull out my Smartnote tablet, in it's small A6 size, and run through each list, taking note.

One of the single most important aspect of the list is following up. When someone promises to deliver, or when I promise to deliver, it goes on a list. And this time, the list item has a deadline. And because of the deadline, most of that stuff now gets done.

I've written about perfectionism before, and these lists are now culled very often. Items that age too much get removed unceremoniously, without fanfare, quietly. It's as though they were never there. They don't even leave a mark, or a whisper. And the list stays pristine and current.

On today's list was writing this piece, and then move on to some program refactoring (boring I know). Again, that's where a distraction free environment, like my BOOX Note Air 3 (not the C version, but the black and white one) come into play. No YouTube distractions, no Netflix distractions, no side-visits to check out Snapchat or WhatsApp. Just writing and a little browsing - for example to check out the spelling of gluconeogenesis. Even a simple excursion to check out a spelling (online) or to use the online thesaurus could get you into trouble, down that rabbit hole they call social media.

But anyway, to-do lists, while annoying, and boring, help structure a day.

And there's something satisfying about crossing things off your list.