I’m not actually much of a fan of to do lists. They aren’t actually much use, in my view, at getting things done. Like planning your writing with bullet points, to do lists often look more like wish lists by leaving the important stuff out, reducing hours or months of work into one line, without helping you to turn your list into reality… leaving you feeling like a failure at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at the end of the year.

• Finish lit review
• Write chapter
• Empty inbox
• Update website

Yeah, right.

However, it’s not always possible to keep everything you need to do in your head, so here are three strategies that have worked for me, one based on place, one based on time, and one based on outlines. 

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1. The post-it note cascade

When I was working a lot on web projects…