A simple To do / In progress / Done system that sticks

Every to-do system I have tried in the last fifteen years failed the same way. It started simple, I added a feature because I was behind, the feature needed maintenance, and six weeks later I was maintaining the system instead of doing the tasks. Priorities, energy levels, projects, subtasks, five kinds of date. Each one made sense on the day I added it.

The one that stuck has three lists: To do, In progress, Done. A task starts on the left and moves right. That is the method. It has survived a job change, a move, and a stretch where I did not open it for a month, which is the real test of a system: can you come back to it without a reset. This article is the handful of rules that make it work, and the two places where it tries to grow back into the thing it replaced.

Why three lists

A to-do list with one column asks one question: is this done or not. A board with three columns asks a second, more useful one: what am I actually doing right now. That middle list is the whole point. It is where you look when you sit down, and it is small by definition, because you can only be in the middle of a few things at once.

Done matters too, more than people expect. On a plain list, finished tasks vanish, and by Friday you cannot remember why the week felt busy. On the board they stay, ticked and struck through, until you clear them. Looking at a full Done list on Friday afternoon is the closest thing a to-do system has to a reward.

The rules

There are five, and the first one is the one that matters.

1. In progress holds three things or fewer. If a fourth wants in, something goes back to To do first. This is the rule that makes the board honest. Everything in that list should be something you touched today or will touch tomorrow.
2. Write tasks as something you can start."Taxes" is a worry. "Find last year's return" is a task. If you cannot picture the first ten minutes, the title is wrong.
3. Order inside To do is the priority. No priority field, no flags. The task at the top is next. When you add something urgent, put it at the top. When something stops mattering, it sinks, and the weekly tidy catches it.
4. Dates only for real deadlines.A due date means someone else is affected if you miss it. "I would like to do this on Tuesday" is not a deadline. Give every task a fake date and the overdue warnings mean nothing within a week.
5. Tags for places and people, not for importance.home, work, errands, a person's name. A tag answers "what can I do while I am here". Importance is already the order.

The weekly tidy

Once a week, Friday for me, three passes over the board. Clear Done: archive everything that is finished, or let the AI do it. Empty In progress of anything you did not touch all week; it goes back to To do, and that is fine, it was never in progress. Then read To do top to bottom and ask one question of each task: is this still true. Tasks that have sat for a month without moving usually are not. Archive them. If they come back, they come back.

The tidy takes ten minutes. Skip it for three weeks and the board turns into the thing you left: a long list with a middle column that lies.

Where it tries to grow back

Two pressures. The first is more lists. Someone suggests Waiting, or Someday, or This week, and each one is reasonable. My rule is that a new list has to earn its place for a month. Waiting earned it for me (things I am blocked on, with the person's name as a tag). Someday did not; it became a place to hide tasks from the tidy. The board lets you add, rename and remove lists, so try one, and remove it if you stop looking at it.

The second pressure is fields. You want a priority because To do is long. You want subtasks because one task is really five. Resist the priority; shorten the list instead. Give in on the subtasks, but do it by splitting the task into five tasks, not by nesting. Nested tasks disappear inside their parent, and a task you cannot see is a task you will not do.

Where the AI fits

I run this on AI TODO List, which is a board built for exactly these three lists with an AI on top. The AI does not change the method. It does the typing and the tidying. "Add buy milk and call the dentist for tomorrow" becomes two tasks without me opening anything. "I finished the slides" ticks one off. "Plan my day" reads what is overdue and due today and proposes the top three, which is the morning routine done for me. "Tidy my board" is the Friday pass: it finds the stale, the finished and the duplicate tasks and asks before it archives anything.

The part I did not expect is that the AI makes rule one easier to keep. When I ask it to plan the day and In progress already has three things, it says so and suggests which one to park. A board cannot nag you kindly; an assistant can.

You can also talk to the board from ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor if that is where you spend your day. Same board, same three lists. The how it works page has the details on tasks, tags, dates and the archive.

Start with the three lists

If you are coming from a system that collapsed, do not import it. Write down the ten things that are actually on your mind, put the one or two you are in the middle of into In progress, and leave the rest. Add tasks as they come up. Do the Friday tidy once. If the board is still small and true after a month, you have a system that sticks.