In which I plan my holiday tasks…

So it may just be because it is 2020 or perhaps I'm just a bit lazy but I’ve found that I often start holiday breaks with a list of things I’d like to do and by the end of the trip* I’ve not achieved most of them. Whether it’s odd jobs or relaxing activities I wanted to get through I just accidental sit around and don’t do them. This holiday season I decided I needed a to do list and though I’d try out the new Todoist Boards feature.

*Or, let’s be real this year: sitting on the sofa at home.

Todoist

I have long used Kanban boards at work but my personal tracking has been through Todoist for over 5 years now to track personal tasks, errands and pretty much anything else I don’t want to keep in my mental RAM. Until recently Todoist just offered a fairly basic to do list format with projects and sub projects. This is more than enough for my normal productivity method of lists of things with timed reminders (or if I’m feeling fancy: location based reminders).

For things that are less time critical (or not at all location dependent) a Kanban board makes more sense. Especially when they are vaguer topics like “Read this book” or “Play this video game". Perfect for my holiday list!

The Holiday Do List

The principle behind this list is quite simple and a bit reminiscent of Getting Things Done. In the run up to your holiday:

• Capture your ideas on the list (The Ideas column)

• (Optionally) Categorise them with tags/labels etc

Then on holiday you just follow the standard Kanban system:

• A To Do column, for pulling things out of the ideas list, these are things you plan to do in the next few days

• A Doing column, for things that are in progress

• A Done column, for when things are finished

The one annoyance at the moment is it doesn’t seem possible to setup the “Done” column to automatically mark a task dragged into as done. It’s not hard to click it done and you can make completed tasks visible if you like.

You can of course use any section headings that help you from the specific to the more general. I’ve just found this has been a better way of encouraging me to make use of my time so that when I look back over my break I don’t feel like I’ve done nothing with it.†

TL;DR: I find this tool helps me keep abreast of things I wanted to get done over my longer breaks and not get swamped by side projects/books/other things I want to do with my time off. It has less complexity than planning timeslots to do each of the tasks which tends to take away from the holiday aspect a bit too much (for me anyway).

†This is not in any way a judgement on people who choose to take a complete break over their holidays. I just like to structure my holidays somewhat; it is a personal choice.

Tom Out!

References

[1] Todoist: Kanban