My Granular To-Do List + The Template
Hi, I'm Sara-Jane, and I have object permanence issues.
I’ve always been a to-do list person, easily making the shift from paper to digital in the 2010s. My to-do list on Apple Notes has been my lifeline at work for the last five years. But, something was missing. And that something was missing because I struggled to conceptualize anything that wasn’t right in front of me. I think I present quite Type A, but I am more Type B. I nurtured strong masking skills and coping tools throughout my childhood so well that I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until the spring semester of my freshman year of college. Medication changed my life, but only when I had one area of focus.
Adulthood, unfortunately, has more than one area of focus.
As I’ve entered a new season of life where I juggle a leadership position at school, content creation and “influencing”, and running a household, I often found myself letting things go or simply forgetting tasks because I couldn’t manage it all. Baseboards, what are those? Going through my toiletry go bag? I’ll just wait to see what I’m missing when I get to my destination. I forgot that this month I needed to schedule a dentist appointment and now they’re booked three months out? It was my cousin’s birthday yesterday?
It’s not sustainable.
A few weeks ago on a solo road trip, alone with my thoughts and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” I had a revelation. What if I made a granular to-do list, one where I could lay out tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis? I started looking for an already-built solution like Notion or Apple Reminders. Those were too fancy. I wanted to do something that would force me to take a pause in my day and really map out my life. Simply put, I needed something that wasn’t integrated into an app on my phone.
Thus, the Granular To-Do List was born, using the most basic system I know: Google Sheets. It started small—partially because I couldn’t conceptualize all the tasks I saddled myself with throughout the day—and grew as I started listing out categories and tasks.
A bit about the process:
I split up everything about my life into categories and started making notes of things I do every day and where they fit in. This took time and I kept an Apple Note going so I wouldn’t forget. This is where I remembered things like, “rotate out PR” and “clean window sills.”
I discovered I also wanted to include a quarterly section and a yearly section.
I realized I needed to list out tasks and goals not only in categories, but in at-a-glance form by day, month, and quarter.
I wanted the joy of checking things off my list, so I added checkboxes.
I discovered the difference between things I always want or need to do at a certain time and goals I have, so I decided to keep those separate. I have a “This Month” and “This Quarter” category for goals that aren’t on the to-do list, like completing a paint-by-numbers kit I ordered.
I held tight to the fact that these lists are ever-evolving and will change as my life and habits change.
I liked that I built it myself and that it made sense to me. No frills, and no distractions.
Over the last couple of weeks, the time I often spent being too overwhelmed to start anything became targeted time. For the first time in this chapter of my life, I had a visual grasp of what I needed to get out of the day, and I made it happen. And if it didn’t happen, I moved it over to the next day. On Mondays, I have the opportunity to reconfigure and start fresh. I’ll do the same at the start of the month and the start of a new quarter.
Yesterday, a Monday, I shared on my Instagram stories that I was doing life admin with my granular to-do list. Several people asked me to share more or give them a link to a template. Here it is! When you click the link, it will force a copy into your own Google Drive. I’ve left a few of my tasks on it so you can see how I plan things out. Don’t make fun of me for having “shave armpits” on my weekly to-do list. I told you this was granular!
Make it your own, give yourself time, and let it evolve. I hope it works for you. If it doesn’t don’t tell me.
See you in the next one,
SJ
“If it doesn’t don’t tell me.” 😂 I love this idea! Excited to try out your template.