Coaching practices for Will Do List vs to Do List

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Will Do List vs to Do List, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My to-do list has everything I could ever conceivably do crammed onto it, so there’s no honest line between someday-maybe and what I’m actually committing to today
• My to-do list has swollen into a dumping ground for every someday-maybe idea I’ve ever had, so it’s less a plan than a wall of guilt
• I end most days having crushed my to-do list and feeling productive, but somehow the thing I actually care about hasn’t budged
• My to-do list just keeps growing with no ceiling and everything floats around with no actual home in my day, so I drift between items, half-start a dozen things, and the open-endedness of it is its own low-grade weight I carry all day.
• My list is just a flat wall of tasks that all look equally urgent, so I keep grabbing whatever’s easiest instead of whatever matters

Practices that may help

1. Separate "will-do" from "to-do" lists
   Keep a master to-do list distinct from the closed daily "will-do" list that you actually commit to.
   Do It Tomorrow, Made Practical
2. Only put tasks on the board that you’ve explicitly decided to do
   Your Kanban board is not a wish list — only tasks you have consciously committed to belong in To Do.
   Personal Kanban, Made Practical
3. Keep OKRs separate from your task list
   OKRs say where you are going; your to-do list says what you do today — do not merge them.
   OKRs for People, Not Just Companies
4. Time-box tasks instead of scheduling by list
   Assign each task a fixed time block on the calendar rather than a position on an open-ended to-do list.
   Parkinson's Law, Made Practical
5. The ABCDE prioritization method
   Label every task A (must), B (should), C (nice), D (delegate), or E (eliminate) before starting.
   Eat That Frog, Made Practical
6. The Not-To-Do List
   The not-to-do list is a set of behaviors, tasks, and commitments you commit to stopping or refusing — permanently. Tim Ferriss argues that elimination is more valuable than optimization because low-leverage activities consume time that no amount of efficiency can recover. The approach is largely practitioner advice backed by mechanistic reasoning about opportunity cost and attention.
7. Think in scenarios and stories, not task lists
   Describe your ideal outcome for a period as a short narrative before breaking it into actions.
   Getting Results the Agile Way (AGS), Made Practical
8. Give someday items a time horizon to distinguish near and far
   Not all someday items are equal — some are waiting for next month, others for retirement.
   The Someday List
9. Route deferred emails into a real task system
   Any email that requires future action belongs in a task manager with a due date — not in a flagged or starred inbox folder.
   Inbox Zero, Made Practical
10. Calendar time blocking
    Give every task a specific start and end time on your calendar.
    Time Blocking, Made Practical

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