The Importance of Keeping Your Workload Visible: One Point of Truth for Tasks
Acknowledging you have “a lot on your plate” isn’t fun; what makes it worse is that you probably haven’t accounted for all the tasks and projects you’re juggling. Managing multiple projects and tasks across various areas of life can be overwhelming, but “dropping balls” (let’s continue the juggling metaphor) feels even worse.
Ensuring your workload is visible and organised reduces stress, prevents burnout, and increases productivity. Having a single point of truth for all your tasks means you can manage your workload effectively and maintain your wellbeing.
In this article, I will share how I keep my workload visible. I use Todoist to manage my tasks, but my approach can work with any task management tool.
Splitting Workload into Life Zones
I divide my life into three zones: personal, work, and business (work is my paid employment and business is my self-employed work). Each zone contains various tasks and projects.
This top-level division means I can see what needs to be done in each life zone. The split between work and business is particularly important as I allocate specific days of my week to work and business tasks and try to avoid context-switching.
Context-switching, or frequently shifting your focus between different tasks or projects, can significantly reduce productivity and increase stress. To understand why avoiding context-switching improves wellbeing and productivity, listen to my podcast episode: Using My Calendar in a More Mindful Way.
Comparing Productivity Approaches
I use an adapted version of Tiago Forte’s PARA Method to organise my tasks (Tiago’s book, The PARA Method, is highly recommended). Tiago recommends splitting tasks into areas (long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time) and projects (short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now). Put simply, projects have a deadline, but areas typically don’t.
Here’s a personal life zone example:
Area: Health and Fitness.
Project: Run the London Marathon in April 2025.
A task under Health and Fitness might be “book a doctor’s appointment to get a repeat prescription”. Tasks under the London Marathon project might relate to training runs and booking travel and accommodation for the night before the race.
Tiago Forte suggests that handling around 15 projects simultaneously is manageable. In contrast, Cal Newport’s slow productivity approach advocates focusing on fewer projects (his book, Slow Productivity, is also highly recommended).
I’ve experimented with both methods and found that I achieve more when focusing on fewer projects, aligning more with Newport’s philosophy.
Regardless of the number of projects you feel is manageable, what’s key is knowing how many you have on the go at any given time.
Implementing Task Visibility and Creating One Point of Truth
I’ve organised my Todoist to keep track of all the tasks and projects I’m working on. Tasks related to “areas” (using the PARA definition) are grouped at the top level, while individual “projects” are nested underneath each life zone (see screenshot below; actual project names are blurred out).
Todoist allows me to collapse each life zone’s project lists when I’m not focusing on that context.
The most crucial aspect of my approach is ensuring every task I must complete is in Todoist (except for meetings, which are on my calendar). While this sounds straightforward, I’ve found that many knowledge workers have a weak spot: email. Unfortunately, your email inbox is not an effective task management tool; anyone can add to it anytime. To maintain a single point of truth, any task mentioned in emails must be added to your to-do list.
Final Thoughts
Making your workload visible reduces anxiety and stress related to task management. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you can’t see your workload, but when you can, you can prioritise, delegate, or even drop some tasks if necessary. Start today by evaluating how visible your workload is and making the necessary adjustments to gain clarity and control over your tasks.
If you need further support with task management, check out my Blueprints or book a coaching session.
