How To Use Planning Systems To Manage Tasks And Avoid Overwhelm
One of the main reasons I started using a planner was that I had become overwhelmed trying to keep track of all my work responsibilities as I moved up in my career. When I began working at my current company, I was in a junior role and felt comfortable keeping track of my tasks and schedule with little more than my Google calendar and a notepad. However, as I was promoted and began to take on more responsibilities within my team, I quickly found the limitations of this system. Add to this the fact that I work in a creative agency — an environment known for requiring teams to juggle a variety of projects, deadlines, and clients — and you have a recipe for mental fatigue.
In 2023, I was deep in the throes of burnout, fighting just to slog through each day without letting any of the balls I was juggling hit the ground. I felt overwhelmed and uninspired, and I knew something needed to change. Since I’m nowhere near retirement age, I couldn’t just quit my job and escape the work that had become drudgery. So, I decided to use some of the creative problem-solving skills I had honed on countless projects and clients and put them to work helping me to find a more sustainable system for my professional life.
Enter, my love affair with planning. I had been interested in the Cloth and Paper planning subscription for a few years but had never taken the leap. So, late in 2023, my partner signed me up for the monthly sub box as a gift for my birthday. I immediately loved the structure that planning brought to my daily life as well as the opportunity it provided to think more deeply and creatively about how to balance my needs and responsibilities. My subscription boxes from Cloth and Paper gave me a chance to try out new planning techniques and tools every month and I slowly began to assemble a planning system that worked for me.
Now, I have many tools that help me document, prioritize, and track my tasks throughout the day, week, and month. I feel more in control of my time, no matter what the day throws at me. I also feel a sense of security knowing that each of my tasks and appointments are carefully accounted for. If you also struggle to manage a busy schedule full of competing priorities, last-minute requests, or changing deadlines, then this is the guide you need to banish overwhelm and avoid chronic burnout. Read on to learn the three essential planning systems I use to manage tasks and stay on top of my ever-changing workload.
Document with a Task Inbox
The first step in my task management system is a simple one-page planner inbox. You can buy dedicated inbox inserts for your planner, or you can draw three columns on a piece of grid paper for a quick and easy inbox setup. In the middle column of your inbox, write down every task you need to accomplish, brain dump style. Don’t try to sort or prioritize tasks just yet — that will come later. Instead, get everything that’s currently swirling around in your head down on paper where you can see it clearly.
One of the foundational principles of planning is that you have to write it down. Carrying the details of your schedule, to-do list, and deadlines in your head creates a huge mental load that sucks up your energy before you even get around to trying to accomplish anything. So, the first step in managing your tasks effectively is to document them. Once you’ve written down all your tasks in the middle column of your planner inbox, write down the date you added the task to your inbox in the left column. This will help you keep track of how long each task has been in your system.
Prioritize with the Eisenhower Matrix
Next, we’ll prioritize the list of tasks you added to your planner inbox. To do this, we’ll use the Eisenhower Matrix, a tool that helps you analyze the relative importance of different tasks. Like the task inbox, you can purchase ready-made planner inserts with the Eisenhower Matrix. Or, you can DIY your own matrix by drawing two lines to divide a piece of graph paper into four boxes. Label the two endpoints of the horizontal line “Urgent” and “Not Urgent” and the two endpoints of the vertical line “Important” and “Not Important.” Now, take the tasks you’ve listed in your inbox and add each one to your matrix based on its importance and urgency.
Tasks like an upcoming work deadline on an important project will be both important and urgent. This category is your highest priority set of tasks, and you will want to move these tasks to the top of your to-do list. Tasks that are urgent but not important (maybe you need to pick up more coffee creamer on the way home) are lower priority and can often be delegated or supported. Perhaps you could ask a partner or roommate to pick up creamer for you, or you could place a grocery order for delivery. Tasks that are important but not urgent — like maintaining a balanced diet or making time for your hobbies — should be scheduled in your planner at appropriate points to make sure these items don’t fall through the cracks in favor of more urgent tasks. Finally, tasks that are neither important nor urgent (for example, answering unwanted emails from recruiters) can be deleted from your to-do list. Now, go back to your inbox, and in the right column, list the status of each task as either priority, scheduled, delegated, or deleted.
Manage Tasks with a KanBan Board
Once you’ve prioritized your tasks and understand which items should be dealt with right away and which should be scheduled, delegated, or deleted, you’re ready for another planning tool that will help you manage your priority tasks from start to completion. This system — called KanBan — was originally developed in Japan to help manage the automotive manufacturing process. However, KanBan is a simple and flexible technique that can be applied to almost any task management system to help decrease mental load and overwhelm.
To create a KanBan dashboard, take a page of graph paper and divide it into four columns. Label the first column To-Do, the second column In Progress, the third column Review, and the fourth column Complete. Then, for all your top priority tasks that you identified in your Eisenhower Matrix (tasks that are both important and urgent), write the name of each task on a sticky note or page flag and line the tasks up in your first column with the most urgent task at the top and the least urgent task at the bottom.
Once you start a task on your KanBan dashboard, move the sticky note with that task into the “In Progress” column. As you approach the end of each task, move it again into the “Review” column while you finish any final details. If you find that the majority of your tasks are quick or simple enough that they do not need a Review phase, you can create a KanBan dashboard with only the three “To-Do,” “In-Progress,” and “Complete” columns.
Once a task is done, move it into the “Complete” column. Try to limit the number of items that are allowed be in any single column at one time. For example, I limit my columns to five items at a time. If I currently have five items in my “In Progress” column, I won’t start any additional tasks from my “To-Do” column until a spot in the “In Progress” column opens up. This helps me minimize overwhelm and shows me what stages my tasks are at. Once a task is moved to the Complete column, go back to your original task inbox and mark its status as finished.
If used consistently, these three simple techniques will go a long way toward improving your overall productivity and decreasing task overwhelm. Going forward, it’s important that you make it a habit to add any new tasks to your planner inbox at regular intervals, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly. I tend to add items to my inbox daily because I’m constantly receiving new requests at work that need to be kept track of, but you should use the schedule that works best for your unique needs. Once your tasks have been documented in your inbox, move them through the other processes outlined above. By maintaining an ongoing cycle of task documentation, prioritization, and tracking, you’ll have a much clearer idea of where you stand and what needs to be done at all times.