I know so many people who need a good to-do list but can’t make one stick. The more senior you become, the less your work is tracked in Jira or other project management tools. Your days are often filled with ad-hoc tasks, like a PR review or a design discussion about an upcoming project. You need to be able to track all these responsibilities, but if you’re like many of my colleagues and mentees, your nicely formatted to-do list sits unused while you either cobble together a few chaotic notes or just wing it entirely.

If that’s you, I suspect your to-do list is missing the single most important feature it needs: ease of adding tasks. My gold standard is that you should be able to add an item while leading a meeting without breaking stride. This means that your to-do list must be easy to access at all times, with almost no page-turning or button-clicking. It also has to be so simple that you don’t need to make any decisions when adding a task—no categorization, no formatting, no prioritization.

This doesn’t mean your to-do list can’t have fancy features. You can have all sorts of useful bells and whistles! You just need to use those features when you have set aside time to engage with your to-do list—either when it’s time to decide what to take on next, or at some set point in the day. Adding a task is not that time.

My To-Do List

If you want some inspiration for building an easy-to-write-to task tracking system, I’ll share the one I’ve used for eight years—as an IC, manager, director, and even now that I’m self-employed and focused on personal projects. I make a new document each week from a template. I’ll give you an example of how it looks mid-week and also (at the very bottom) a blank template for you to use or modify if you’d like.

Week of 09/29/2025

PRIORITIES
- Blog
- Coaching
- American Sign Language

THIS WEEK
** Monday **
Sent blog post to editor
Coaching meetings prep
Met with coaching client
ASL class

** Tuesday **
Met with coaching client
ASL homework
Set up python project to make Anki deck for ASL 103 vocab

** Wednesday **
Reviewed post edits
Published blog post!

TODO: update coaching section of website
TODO: respond to coaching inquiry email
TODO: study ASL
TODO: work on Anki deck for ASL 103 vocab
TODO: call vet to schedule Nutmeg well visit

** Thursday **
TODO: write post on LinkedIn about blog post

** Friday **
TODO: study ASL
TODO: clear unread emails

NEXT WEEK
TODO: review ASL vocab before class
TODO: start October post
TODO: prep for coaching sessions

Here are some particular elements worth highlighting:

• Plain text. I have this open in a plain text document on my desktop at all times. This means that it’s only ever a couple clicks away and that I am not distracted by text formatting.
• Priorities. Every Monday, I set priorities for the week. When I inevitably have to drop some tasks, I can use my priorities to decide which ones are most important and which can wait. When I have a bit of extra time for bigger or less pressing items, I pick ones that are most related to these priorities. If you have long-term goals, perhaps set with your manager quarterly, you can use your weekly priorities to stay connected with those longer-term goals. I recommend never going over three priorities.
• Daily lists. I have a place for tasks each day, so that I’m not distracted by things I know I can’t accomplish until later. When I add something, though, I do not decide which day—instead, I add the item to the current day and sort it later. That’s why the Wednesday (today) list is long, but the Thursday and Friday lists are short. At the end of the day, I move whatever I didn’t accomplish to future days.
• Next week. Similar to the daily section, I have a “next week” section. I use this for anything that is next week or beyond. When I start a new document the following Monday, I copy everything from “next week” over and sort out where it should go. You will likely notice some tasks getting pushed from week to week indefinitely, or see your “next week” section piling up. If that happens, it’s a signal to revisit your priorities, time management, and workload. Maybe those tasks need to be dropped entirely (if so, who do you need to inform?), or maybe you need more dedicated time on your calendar for items that require sustained focus.
• Finished tasks. I like being able to see what I’ve actually gotten done, so I use the same document to track completed tasks. This allows me to skim through a week and see what I finished and whether it was in line with my priorities.

If you don’t have a to-do list structure you like, I recommend you invest in one. I’ve had mentees come up to me months or years later and say it was the one thing that made the biggest difference in their effectiveness at work. You are absolutely welcome to use my format as-is or as inspiration for your own template. Just remember that one golden rule: adding to your to-do list should be as simple as possible.

Here’s an empty template for you to play with:

Week of xx/xx/xxxx

PRIORITIES
-
-
-

THIS WEEK

** Monday **

** Tuesday **

** Wednesday **

** Thursday **

** Friday **

NEXT WEEK