Daily To Do List Templates

Ten free daily to-do list templates for Microsoft Word and Excel. The template takes a minute; the part that decides whether a list works is how the tasks are written and what happens to the ones that never get done.

Which list do you actually need?

Many people run a daily list alongside a schedule: the schedule holds the fixed commitments, the list fills the gaps between them.

The templates

Ten layouts, from plain checklists to sheets with priority and time columns. Simpler is usually better for something rewritten every day.

List 1 12 KBDownload

List 2 9 KBDownload

List 3 9 KBDownload

List 4 26 KBDownload

List 5 15 KBDownload

List 6 13 KBDownload

List 7 7 KBDownload

List 8 9 KBDownload

List 9 822 KBDownload

List 10Download

Write tasks you can actually start

The commonest reason an item sits on a list for a fortnight is not laziness. It is that the item does not say what to do.

• Start with a verb. “Insurance” is a topic. “Call insurer about renewal quote” is a task. The first requires you to work out what you meant before you can begin; the second you can just do.
• One action per line. “Sort out the website” is a project, not a task. Break it into the next physical step: “Write homepage copy”, “Email designer about logo files”.
• Anything over about half an hour needs breaking down. Large items get skipped because starting them requires a clear block of time, which rarely appears.
• Include what you need to start. A phone number, a file name, the question you need to ask. Removing the friction between reading the task and starting it is most of the battle.
• Keep the list to what today can hold. A list of twenty items you knew was impossible at nine in the morning teaches you to ignore the list.

Pick what matters before you start

Lists naturally sort by what is easiest, not what is important. Two habits correct for that.

• Mark two or three items as the ones that count. If only those get done, the day was a success. Everything else is a bonus rather than a failure.
• Do one of them first, before email. The first hour tends to be the only part of the day you reliably control, and spending it on messages means the important work waits for a quiet moment that does not come.

Anything that takes under two minutes is usually faster done than written down, so do it rather than listing it.

What to do with the ones you keep carrying over

Every list develops a residue of items that move from one day to the next indefinitely. They are worth treating as a signal rather than a backlog.

If something has moved forward three days running, it gets one of three outcomes:

• Do it now, if it is small and you have simply been avoiding it. It is probably costing more as a recurring item than it would to finish.
• Schedule it, with an actual time in your calendar, if it genuinely needs a block of attention. It will not happen in the gaps.
• Delete it. If it has survived three days of not mattering enough, it may not matter. Deleting something you were never going to do is a decision, not a defeat.

Rewriting the same item every day for a fortnight is the most common way a to-do system quietly stops being used.

Two lists work better than one

Keep the daily list short by keeping everything else somewhere else.

Have a capture list — one long, messy, ongoing list of everything you might need to do, which you never work from directly. Then each day, move a realistic handful onto today’s list. Capturing and choosing are different activities, and mixing them is what produces a daily list of forty items that is really a wish list.

1. Write tomorrow’s list the evening before

   Five minutes at the end of the day, while you still remember what is outstanding. You start the next morning knowing what to do instead of deciding, which is the harder part.

2. Keep it where you work

   Printed beside the keyboard, or in Google Sheets on your phone if you are moving around. A list you have to open something to see is a list you consult twice a day.

3. Tick things off rather than deleting them

   Seeing what you finished matters on the days when it feels like nothing got done. In Excel, a simple Done column works; on paper, a line through it.

4. Start fresh each day

   Rewrite rather than carrying yesterday’s sheet forward. Rewriting is the moment you notice what has been hanging around, which is exactly the review the carry-over rule above depends on.

Common questions