Naming to-do lists

You may have noticed that I’m a huge fan of to-do lists. Now that I can run Todoist through my iGoogle page, I’m even happier.

I maintain a large number of my to-do lists and their sublists through Todoist these days, each one with nice, neat names to clearly identify what project they organize. But I still run my daily list on my whiteboard because it’s helpful to just have everything in front of me.

The whiteboard list has a bit more flavor than my computerized lists. It started off as just “To-do list”. Then, it became “The deal with (date)”. Over the weekend, it ran around under the title “Today I think I’ll…”. Right now, it’s called “Plan of Attack” in the hopes it will finally motivate me to do what I’ve been putting off all weekend.

Naming the constantly visible to-do list differently does a number of things for my mind. It lets me know what mood I started the day with. It tells me whether or not I feel the list is light or ambitious. Because I often write the list right before I fall asleep the night before or right after I wake up that morning, it often amuses me once I wake up and see the product of my half-asleep state.

In some cases, the name of the list is a total motivator. Other times, it just makes me feel better that I can’t locate my motivation. It’s just one more way to have fun overorganizing my life!