How to make a to-do list that actually works (with template)

Why most to-do lists fail

A to-do list rarely fails for lack of willpower. It fails because it’s badly built, and the same three flaws show up almost every time.

It’s too long. Thirty items for a day that has room for eight. By evening, twenty-two are still unticked, the list turns into a daily reminder of what you didn’t do, and eventually you stop opening it.

The items are vague. “Taxes.” “Mom.” “Website.” Those are topics, not actions. Every time you read them you have to redo the thinking (where do I even start?), and your brain slides to the next line instead. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, says that more than 90% of the lists he has seen are incomplete inventories of still-unclear things. That’s a consultant’s observation rather than a study, but most people recognise their own list in it.

Nothing has a date. A list with no timing mixes the bill due Friday with the “someday” project. Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2012, consultant Daniel Markovitz went as far as telling readers to stop making to-do lists and move everything into their calendar. You don’t have to go that far, but keep the core idea: whatever matters this week needs a slot. That’s the whole idea behind time blocking.

Write every item as a next action

David Allen defines a “next action” as the next physical, visible activity that moves something forward. Physical: you can do it with your body (call, email, buy, draft). Visible: someone watching you could tell whether it’s done.

The difference is obvious side by side:

Three rules get you there:

• Start with an action verb. Call, send, buy, draft, book. Avoid “deal with”, “handle” and “look into”: they aren’t steps.
• Separate projects from actions. “Plan the holiday party” is a multi-step project. It belongs on a projects list; only its next action goes on today’s list.
• Use the two-minute rule. Allen’s advice: if something takes less than two minutes, do it now instead of writing it down. Replying “yes, Thursday works” doesn’t deserve a line.

What research says about unfinished tasks

You’ll often read that the brain remembers unfinished tasks better than finished ones: the “Zeigarnik effect”. Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik described it in Berlin in 1927. As the usual story goes, her supervisor Kurt Lewin had noticed that a waiter remembered unpaid orders better than settled ones. Her participants recalled more of the tasks that had been interrupted.

The memory part, though, doesn’t replicate well. A 2025 meta-analysis by Romain Ghibellini and Beat Meier pooled 59 publications. Across 37 of them, excluding Zeigarnik’s own study, the ratio of interrupted to completed tasks recalled was 0.99: no difference. What does hold up is the urge to go back to an interrupted task when you get the chance (the Ovsiankina effect), with an average resumption rate of about 67% across 21 publications.

The finding that matters most for your list comes from E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister (2011). In their first experiment, 73 students thought about two important tasks they had to finish in the coming days. Some then wrote down how, when and where they would do them. During a later reading task, 65.2% of the students without a plan reported their minds wandering, against 33.3% of those who had made one. In another experiment, an unfinished goal dragged down performance on an anagram test, except for people who had committed to a specific plan. The authors add a caveat worth knowing: planning reduced intrusive thoughts, but it didn’t reduce anxiety about the task. A plan frees your attention; it doesn’t replace doing the work.

Sleep research points the same way. In a 2018 study led by Michael Scullin, 57 young adults spent five minutes writing before bed in a sleep lab. Those who wrote a to-do list for the next few days fell asleep in 15.8 minutes on average, against 25.1 minutes for those who wrote about tasks they had already completed. The more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep. These are small studies with students, so treat them as a strong hint rather than a guarantee.

The practical takeaway: writing a task down isn’t what brings relief. Writing down the next action and when you’ll do it is.

Cap the daily list: the 1-3-5 rule and the Ivy Lee method

Your master list can be long. Your daily list can’t. Two simple methods help you cut it.

The 1-3-5 rule. Suggested around 2013 by Alex Cavoulacos, co-founder of the careers site The Muse: assume that on any given day you can finish one big thing, three medium things and five small things. Nine items in total. It’s a rule of thumb, not a research finding. Its value is that it forces a mix of sizes: one two-hour task, three half-hour tasks, five ten-minute ones. If your days are full of meetings or school pickups, scale it down to 1-2-3.

The Ivy Lee method. The story is famous: in 1918, Ivy Lee, a pioneer of public relations, supposedly gave Charles M. Schwab, the steel magnate running Bethlehem Steel, a few minutes of advice, and three months later Schwab sent him a $25,000 check. Treat it as an anecdote: James Clear, who popularised it, notes that the earliest reference he could find dates from the 1960s. The method itself fits in five steps:

1. At the end of each day, write down the six most important things to do tomorrow. No more than six.
2. Rank them in order of true importance.
3. Tomorrow, start with the first and only move on once it’s finished.
4. Work down the list in order.
5. At the end of the day, move anything unfinished to the new list of six.

Both are prepared the night before, in five minutes. To decide what earns a spot at the top, the Eisenhower matrix is still the simplest tool.

A to-do list template you can copy or print

This template fits on a letter or A4 page, or in a phone note. Copy it, or print a small stack and keep it on your desk.

TO-DO LIST — Day: ____________   Date: ___ / ___ / ______

THE BIG ONE (1)                             Time slot       Done
1. _______________________________________  __:__ – __:__   [ ]

MEDIUM TASKS (3)
2. _______________________________________  __:__ – __:__   [ ]
3. _______________________________________  __:__ – __:__   [ ]
4. _______________________________________  __:__ – __:__   [ ]

SMALL TASKS (5, do them in one batch)
5. ____________________________   6. ____________________________
7. ____________________________   8. ____________________________
9. ____________________________

DUE ON A SPECIFIC DATE (→ set a reminder)
- ______________________________  on ___ / ___ at __:__
- ______________________________  on ___ / ___ at __:__

WAITING ON SOMEONE
- ______________________________  follow up on ___ / ___

CARRY OVER TO TOMORROW
- ______________________________

Reminder: every line starts with a verb (call, send, buy, book…).

The “Waiting on someone” box avoids a common trap: tasks blocked by someone else (a quote, a reply, a delivery) that sit on today’s list even though you can’t move them. Park them separately with a follow-up date.

Paper or a to-do list app?

The best to-do list is the one you look at several times a day. Beyond that, each option has its strengths.

A combination that works well: today’s list on paper, because it’s short and visible, and everything with a date in a tool that sends a reminder. Paper won’t buzz on Friday at 9 am to tell you the electric bill is due.

The routine that keeps the list alive

A to-do list decays fast if nobody maintains it. Two appointments with yourself are enough.

Every evening, five minutes. Cross off what’s done, carry over what isn’t, and prepare tomorrow’s list (1-3-5 or Ivy Lee). When an item gets carried over for the third time, ask why: is it too big (break it down), blocked (move it to “waiting on”), or unimportant (delete it)?

Every week, twenty minutes. Review the master list, pick three priorities for the week and give each a slot. Our time management tips cover this weekly review in more detail.

Frequently asked questions

How many tasks should be on a to-do list?

No study sets a number. The well-known methods land between 3 and 9 tasks a day: six for Ivy Lee, nine for the 1-3-5 rule. The right number is the one you usually finish. If you rarely tick off more than half your list, trim it until you finish it four days out of five.

What’s the best to-do list app?

The one you open without thinking about it. Check four things: you can add a task in under ten seconds, you get a reminder at the time you choose, recurring tasks are handled for you, and you can share a list if you run a household or a business with other people. Advanced features mostly help people who already have the list habit.

Should I use a to-do list or a calendar?

Both, for different jobs. The to-do list says what exists; the calendar says when you’ll do it. Short tasks with no deadline can live on the list. Long or important tasks work better with a slot in the calendar.

What should I do with tasks that sit on my list for weeks?

They almost always hide a wording problem. Rewrite them as a next action (“Taxes” becomes “Download the 1099 from the bank website”). If they still don’t move, decide: schedule them for a specific date, hand them to someone else, or delete them.

In short

A to-do list that works is short, written as concrete actions, and tied to time: today’s list for today, reminders for anything with a date. Tonight, take five minutes to rewrite tomorrow’s list in nine lines or fewer, each one starting with a verb.

Sources

• David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Viking, 2001 (next actions, two-minute rule).
• David Allen, “How is a Next Action List Different from a To Do List?”, gettingthingsdone.com, 10 February 2011: gettingthingsdone.com.
• Daniel Markovitz, “To-Do Lists Don’t Work”, Harvard Business Review, 24 January 2012: hbr.org.
• E. J. Masicampo and Roy F. Baumeister, “Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683, 2011: doi.org/10.1037/a0024192.
• Michael K. Scullin, Madison L. Krueger, Hannah K. Ballard, Natalya Pruett and Donald L. Bliwise, “The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep: A polysomnographic study comparing to-do lists and completed activity lists”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(1), 139–146, 2018: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5758411.
• Bluma Zeigarnik, “Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen”, Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1–85, 1927.
• Romain Ghibellini and Beat Meier, “Interruption, recall and resumption: a meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects”, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, article 962, 2025: nature.com.
• Alex Cavoulacos, “A Better To-Do List: The 1-3-5 Rule”, The Muse, 2013: themuse.com; Kathryn Minshew and Alexandra Cavoulacos, The New Rules of Work, Crown Business, 2017.
• James Clear, “The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity” (the anecdote and a note on its sources): jamesclear.com/ivy-lee; Scott M. Cutlip, The Unseen Power: Public Relations, a History, 1994, pp. 118–119.

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