Now, don’t get me wrong, as I am a little more old-school I love a pen and paper for keeping on top of tasks. I love a good diary or a good notebook, with some nice crisp paper and my favourite pen. (Oh, it’s a Uni-Ball Signo 0.7mm, thanks for asking. It’s a joy to write with). However, sometimes the coffee shop table is too small to write on. Sometimes you left the house without the essential To-Do tools. Sometimes, you just need an electronic solution.

I have tried quite a lot of these tools over time and whilst you might think; they all do the same thing, so what’s the difference? The reality is despite trying a lot of them, I always come back to Microsoft’s To-Do. I find the layout so simple to use. I love the fact it will sync effortlessly between your laptop and your phone (assuming you have the app on your phone), keeping you fully updated. If you have the unfortunate experience of having to work with other humans, you can get tasks assigned to you and you can assign tasks to them. Fun! Fun! Fun!

My standard approach is to just plow all my tasks into the Tasks window, then move those tasks into the “My Day” window, and deal with whatever needs to be dealt with, on a daily basis. Perfect. It stops you getting overwhelmed. Deal with what needs to be dealt with. Also, the ability to create lists is really useful. These lists are separate from your tasks, and can contain many items. Just like, er, a list….

Of course, the trick to any To-Do list is how you deal with it. You can’t cherry pick the fun stuff and ignore the other jobs you don’t want to do. I recommend the “Eat the Frog” approach. This is the process of identifying the most difficult or unpleasant tasks of the day, and completing them before you do any other work. Once those unpleasant tasks are completed first, the rest of the work day is a breeze. The day really starts to swing once you hear the lovely little tinkle of music when you tick off that last Eat the Frog task.

Microsoft To-Do can be found here