It matters little to you that I've got too much to do. The good news is that I am in fact trying to do something about it. I often find people, myself included, struggling to find a way to easily collect the things that need to be accomplished as they effort toward a desired outcome. Actually, just moving over to the "Desired Outcome" terminology is a leap forward for many people. It gets them focused on what they actually want to to and gets them unstuck from some nebulous and thus unactionable idea. Instead, they say "I'd like this thing to look like this by this date."
Since the problem comes up repeatedly in my encounters, I thought I'd create the simplest of templates for capturing a list of action items. Since sharing that template is free and easy, I thought I would. Let me know if it helps. It's not much, but that's the idea.
Capture just the essence of what you want the outcome to be. Then capture, in the simplest of terms, what needs to get done to accomplish that. Don't attempt to impose structure to that list when you are creating it. Just fling every idea onto the paper. When you're done, you're head will be clear. You can then decide if organizing the list by person, date, or order is warranted.
Here is the format. It is a Google Docs template.
