Swift To-Do List Blog

How to get organized, how to be productive, Swift To-Do List tips and tricks

How to separate work and personal tasks

When you use a to-do list software (such as Swift To-Do List) for some time, you will end up with many captured tasks.

If you feel that you could organize your tasks better, you probably could. The easiest way of doing that is to categorize your tasks into multiple to-do lists.

One way of doing that is separating your work-related and personal tasks.

Today, I will show you exactly how to do that (step-by-step). You will also learn how to additionally categorize your tasks by areas/projects, and how to view all work-related or personal tasks at once.

Separating Work and Personal tasks

You can create as many to-do lists as you need in the to-do list tree. You might have already created several to-do lists – in that case, you can use the following information for inspiration to refine your current categorization.

Now, let’s create two new top-level to-do lists, “Work” and “Personal” and then divide all your existing tasks among them.

Work vs. personal tasks

Here are the steps to separate your personal and work tasks:

  1. Use menu Tree – Add To-Do List to create a new to-do list named “Personal”.
  2. Use menu Tree – Add To-Do List to create a new to-do list named “Work”.
  3. Click your current to-do list (where your tasks are) to view it, and Drag and Drop each personal task to the new “Personal” to-do list, and each work-related task to the new “Work” to-do list. Dragging and Dropping tasks works the same as when you move files to a folder in Windows. If you don’t know how to do this, here is a video (moving tasks to a different to-do list is shown in about halfway the video). You can also Cut and Paste the tasks instead of using Drag and Drop.
  4. Finally, if your current to-do list is empty now, you might want to delete it (right-click it, and select Delete), so you have just the two new lists – “Work” and “Personal”.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully separated your personal and work tasks.

Organizing your work tasks by areas

Now, let’s setup several to-do lists based on areas/projects of your work tasks.

  1. When it comes to your work tasks, ask yourself: What are the 3-5 main areas (or projects)?
  2. For each area/project where it makes sense to you, create a new sub-to-do-list under the “Work” to-do list. To do that, right-click the “Work” to-do list and select Add Sub To-Do List in the popup menu. Name each new sub-to-do list based on the area or project (e.g. “Marketing”, “Reports”, “Presentations”, “Clients”, “Project Omega”, etc.)
  3. Move tasks that belong to a certain area/project to their new home. Again, you can use Drag and Drop and your mouse, or Cut and Paste.

Tip: You can also Drag and Drop the actual to-do lists and memos around the tree using your mouse too, to re-order and organize them.

The result might look like this:

Work vs. personal tasks categorized by area

You can of course do the same for your personal tasks now.

Viewing tasks from multiple lists at once

Sometimes, it is useful to view all tasks at once, so you can get a big picture perspective.

Now, if you need to view all tasks at once, you can click the big View button in the main toolbar, and select All Lists:

View mode in Swift To-Do List

To view only the selected to-do list again, press the View button again, and click Selected To-Do List.

Here is the really useful thing though –

If you want to view all your work-related tasks, you can select the Work to-do list in the tree, and then, click the View button and click Selected List + Sub-lists. This will display all tasks from the Work to-do list, and also all tasks from all its sub-lists.

Likewise, if you want to view only personal tasks, you can select the Personal to-do list in the tree, and again, make sure the view mode is set to Selected List + Sub-lists.

So now you can view only one particular to-do list, or all tasks at once, or only work-related tasks, or only personal tasks. Quite useful, isn’t it?

Another way of reducing complexity and making your list shorter is to use the Hide Until feature.

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Freedom vs. Structure …and Productivity

Myers-Briggs (personality type indicator) distinguishes between extroverts and introverts, sensors and intuitors, thinkers and feelers, and judgers and perceivers. The last dichotomy (judgers vs. perceivers) fascinates me the most.

The common description of judgers is that they are organized, have their life structured and everything planned, arrive on time (or even early), want everything to be decided and settled, often seem rigid – but also responsible, and like closure. It is unacceptable to them not to get things done, not to get results, not to finish. (Note: “judger” does not mean judgmental.)

On the other hand, perceivers seem chaotic, are spontaneous and flexible, often arrive late (or not at all), don’t like making decisions, always feel it’s premature to make a decision, always want more information, like to keep their options open, want things to be open-ended, tend to procrastinate, and prefer starting new things to finishing them.

Which one are you?

Now, there is other, much more interesting definition: Judgers try to “lock down” the external world, so they have internal freedom. Perceivers try to “lock down” the internal world, so they have outer world freedom.

And to evolve ourselves to the next level, we need to develop and integrate both our Judging and Perceiving aspects. It is usually our weakest aspect that limits us the most.

Perceivers have problems making decisions. The word “decision” originally comes from Latin, and it literally means “to cut off”. When you decide, you cut the other options off. Perceivers hate that – they want to keep as many options open as possible. However, this comes at a price: When they keep postponing decisions, they might never decide. When they not get on a particular train, because they are afraid they might miss a better one, they might miss all the trains.

That being said, it seems to me that ultimately in the end-game, it’s more advantageous to be an “enlightened” perceiver – and have the outer world freedom. Part of Nathaniel Branden’s definition of self-esteem is knowing you are competent to cope with the basic challenges in life. But how about knowing you will thrive, regardless the challenges in life? Regardless the environment? To me, that seems worth striving for.

However, I also think that if you really want to be efficient as a perceiver, you have to develop your judger muscles. And no, there is no other option (even getting someone else to structure your life isn’t sufficient). Developing those muscles and going through a “judger stage” can be very challenging. You need to structure and organize the outer world (your life), so it pushes you to be efficient and get things done. This also gives you the opportunity to master the control of your inner impulses, and discover which structures give you the most leverage on yourself and when to use them.

The ultimate idea is that as an enlightened perceiver, you have an inner compass so strong and powerful, that you move forward regardless all hell breaking loose. The inner compass must be stronger than the low inner impulses from your reptilian brain, and it must be stronger than distractions and interruptions from the outer world.

All that being said, it will probably always be advantageous (from the efficiency standpoint) to outsource a significant amount of your daily decision making to outer structures (= being organized, having things pre-decided and planned). It just makes sense – the same way it makes sense to buy socks rather than to tailor them yourself.

What once seemed an extreme measure becomes a natural thing and a necessity when the stakes are high (in your life and mission).

For example, do you know what these people have in common?

Obama, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Einstein - freedom vs. structure

They have or had a wardrobe full of completely identical clothes. Why? They don’t want to waste time and energy deciding everyday “bullshit” like “What am I going to wear” – not to speak of having to buy new clothes every 3-6 months.

Einstein is said to be probably the most famous INTP (Introvert, Intuitive, Thinker, Perceiver). But he’s not your common garden-variety perceiver: There is no way he could’ve accomplished what he has done without building his judger muscles.

To sum this up, here’s what you can do to get to the next level:

If you are a perceiver, get organized, embrace structure, stop procrastinating, start finishing things and learn to make quick decisions. Go overboard… for a year. Then, loosen up.

If you are judger, first loosen up, then work on your inner compass (discover your values and goals), and work on your flexibility. Do a lot of soul-searching. Then, play on your natural strength and become as efficient as you can with your new inner compass.

This is true freedom.

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The ultimate to-do list and notes software for Windows.

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Swift Mind Freedom is a method of using Swift To-Do List for
instant relief, total control and super efficiency.

Learn 11 powerful principles to get and stay organized
and stress-free.

Each of the 11 principles comes with a fun, hand-drawn illustration.

Swift Mind Freedom method is easy, simple, fun, and gives you
fast results.