Ticking off boxes or crossing out items off a list can be satisfying and leave you feeling productive and staying on top of your assignments. Whether digitally or the, good old-fashioned way, on paper, using agendas and to-do lists can be extremely helpful in organizing your day, week or semester. As someone who loves to plan every second of every day, I am undoubtedly a huge fan of various planning methods and have tried many different ones throughout my time at university. This week, I tried three popular time management and to-do list methods so you don’t have to.

Before we begin, however, a few disclaimers about my evaluation of the three techniques. Firstly, I made a point of not trying out particular apps or softwares, so that the methods are accessible to anyone who would like to try them, whether on paper or digitally. Secondly, of course, there is no guarantee that the methods that work for me will bring the same benefits to others, but there is always a chance that they will. Lastly, it is important to remember to plan not only one’s work and urgent tasks, but also always make time for leisure activities. Being at university can become overwhelming and it can be tempting to overdo it with planning, which makes it even more crucial to have spare time to simply live life. Without further ado — the verdict.

I am unsure where this method first originated, but it is quite simple to implement and does not require the purchase of any additional planners, apps or subscriptions. Essentially, the system consists of creating one list for tasks that must be completed on that same day, a second list for things that have to get done sometime during that week and lastly, a third list for tasks that have to get done at some time. In this method, tasks are divided by time and urgency rather than by nature of the task. For example, to-dos relating to academics, free time and sports or other activities would make it onto the same list and would only be divided by when they are due or how urgent they are.

What I enjoyed about this method was that I was able to see all the tasks that needed to be completed at one glance, but still managed not to get overwhelmed, since not all the tasks were on the same list — only the urgent ones were on the "today" list. It is also a straight-forward and intuitive system that does not require extensive preparation. I sat down on a Sunday night, wrote out the tasks for the next day, week and semester and started ticking items off on Monday morning. One downside, however, might be that some people may not like thinking that far ahead, so they might not enjoy having the third ("to be done at some time") list. However, there is always the option of leaving this last list out and sticking with the first two lists. Overall, I found this system to be effective and non-problematic.

Three Lists by Category This is another method based on creating three lists, but this time the tasks are divided by theme, rather than by deadline or urgency. The three lists, in my case, were: classes — which included studying, readings and homework assignments — capstone work and extras (including leadership roles and campus work, as well as reading and sports). I ended up with lists that were never of equal length, as the "academics" and "capstone" sections were considerably longer, but I still ended up listing everything I had to get done that day.

My favorite part about this list is that when I consciously divided my tasks into categories, at the end of the day I could keep track of how much time I had spent on each part of my life as a student. Of course, some days are much busier than others, but overall, I try to include some of the tasks from the "extras" category into every day. The drawback to this system was that there were three lists instead of one, which meant that I sometimes overplanned by day because my lists looked "empty" if each of them included only three items. This can, and should, be avoided to prevent the feeling of being overworked or incapable of completing all the scheduled tasks for the day.

The Ranking Method I first encountered this method a couple of months ago and have seen it on several platforms since then, so I decided to give it a try. It is not officially called the "A-F" Method, but that is essentially what it is. The method entails thinking of tasks that one has to complete and listing them all while attributing to each task an importance grade from A (most important) to F (least important). Each task is supposed to take no more than two hours to complete, so larger tasks can be broken down into smaller, more manageable components.

What I enjoyed about this method is that it helped me keep an eye on which tasks are most important and which ones can potentially be moved onto the next day in case I did run out of time at the end of the workday. Breaking larger to-dos into smaller tasks is also helpful, as it gives one the sense of having achieved more and working toward a larger goal. However, I personally found it difficult to give some tasks a strict A to F rating of importance or urgency and spent more time than intended on creating a proper to-do list due to this issue.

Overall, I quite enjoyed using all three of these to-do lists and don’t have a strong opinion as to which one I would recommend. I think it depends on whether you prefer to look at your tasks from the timeline or the theme angle and with this, as with many other things, the answer might be a combination of various time-management methods. At the end of the day, it matters that you get done what you planned to achieve and somehow find the time to step back and remember that, despite the current overbooked schedule many of us may have, at the end of the day, not everything can, or should, be a to-do list item.