metadata
Making your to do list AWESOME!
[N.B. A lot of my inspiration for this post is taken from Merlin Mann's Building a Smarter To-Do List parts 1 and 2 so read them if you like]
Students are being given new assignments every day and they need somewhere to record them for future reference. Believe it or not there is a science to this and Mr Mann has made a career from writing and exploring this branch of the broader science known as GTD. But I don’t intend to delve into GTD now, what I’m going to talk about today is how you can create the perfect to-do list for you.
What is a to-do list for?
A to-do list can be as useful or as useless as you make it. At it’s best it can guide you through your saturday night of work with ease and save you half an hour of work, at it’s worst it can help you squeeze out that final piece just in time. However you use your to-do list it always helps you out as long as you remember one thing: keep it simple.
Is this the ideal to-do list?
The to-do list above is indeed ideal for it’s purpose. As you can see it’s a checklist of all the things someone needs to remember for a holiday and it works well for a number of reasons.
- Simple labels
- Not too long
- Easy check boxes
The best to-do lists are simple (making them easy to read), short (making them easy to refer to and easier to work through) and easy to mark off.
How is this acheived?
I’ll give a ‘real-world’ example. Let’s say that you work in a store and you are responsible for stocking the shelves of a particular section, you’ll need to make a list of exactly what you need, how much of it you need and how urgently you need it. Sounds like a simple task but there is a way of doing this which’ll earn you an A+ from your boss.
Work from left to right, making a simple list (like the one above) and write a straight list of each item you need which looks something like this:
- Carrots
- Onions
- Bananas
- Green Grapes
- Large Oranges
That’s pretty simple but it won’t tell you how much and how urgently you need those things. So for that you need to add some metadata. This is simply data about data and will give you an extra bit of detail which will enable you to get exactly what you need.
So the first metadata we can add can be quantity:
- Carrots (1 box)
- Onions (1 sack)
- Bananas (2 boxes)
- Green Grapes (5 bunches)
- Large Oranges (1 box)
And the second can be urgency:
- Carrots (1 box)
- Onions (1 sack)
- Bananas (2 boxes)
- \\\ Green Grapes (5 bunches) ///
- \\\ Large Oranges (1 box) ///
How necessary is that really?
Well it can make quite a difference. If you use the first list you’re going to get carrots, onions, bananas and green grapes (who knows in what quantities) and then you’ll run out of room on the trolley by the time you get to large oranges which are an urgent item. If you use list three however you’ll go straight to green grapes and large oranges because they are marked as urgent and so the most important products will be stacked up well. Furthermore, because you only got 5 bunches of green grapes and not a whole box you now have enough room on the trolley for all the items on your list.
In this way of doing things the boss is happy, you’re happy and the customer is happy. What could be better?
This is just one example of how to do things but there are many ways to customise your to-do list to get the most out of it. Here’s an example of one which could be used at Christmas:
- Jake - iPod nano @ amazon
- Sophie - DVD player @ play.com /**
- Dad - Slippers + Chocolates @ ? ****
Here we can see three different levels of importance represented by stars and also destinations shown by the @. Perhaps it was a bit confusing before I explained that but it highlights the fact that your to-do list if for you only.
it’s something for which you are the most appropriate person for the job
If you’re still uncertain, here’s how a student can use a to-do list:
First of all your to-do list will probably be ongoing. You should be checking off and adding new items to it constantly and so perhaps a Moleskine or an iPhone app such as Dobot Todos is a better and more practical solution for your to-do list. So you add an item when you’re given an assignement or when you remember anything else you need to do such as ask for an extension and you tick off an item when it’s completed. It’s a good idea to keep it on your person when you’re in school/college and at your desk when at home so you can alter it immediately (iPhone is handy for this).
So get out there and customise your to-do list to the max! But make sure you keep it simple, short and relavent to you.