To do list samples: five formats, five situations

Published October 2, 2026 by Drifta

Drifta is an iPhone task app for ADHD that gives every task its own time window.

A to-do list sample isn't a single template, since the right one depends on what kind of day you're planning for. A short daily list suits an ordinary day. A capped, ranked list suits a day that's trying to cram in too much. A project kickoff list suits the first day of something new, and a reset list suits the day after a system fell apart. Here are five named formats, each with a real example and the specific situation it fits.

The short daily list

A short daily list is three to five items, written as actions, with nothing on it unless it's actually scheduled for today, the default format for a normal day with no special pressure on it.

Sample:

• Reply to the invoice email from the contractor
• Pick up the dry cleaning before 6pm
• Call the dentist to reschedule Thursday's appointment
• Submit the expense report

Four items, each one a specific action rather than a category. This format works best on days without a major project competing for attention, since it has no built-in way to flag that one item matters more than the others.

The 1-3-5 list

The 1-3-5 rule caps a day at one big task, three medium tasks, and five small ones, nine items in total, a format credited to Alex Cavoulacos, founder of The Muse. It's built around the idea that a realistic day holds exactly one major thing, not three, and sizes everything else around that limit instead of around an optimistic guess at capacity.

Sample:

• 1 big: Finish the first draft of the quarterly report
• 3 medium: Review two job applicants' portfolios; update the project timeline; prep slides for Thursday's meeting
• 5 small: Reply to three short emails; pay the internet bill; book the dentist; order more printer ink; confirm Friday's lunch plan

This format fits a day that genuinely has variety in it, a mix of something hard, a few medium things, and a handful of quick ones, rather than a day that's either all big tasks or all small ones.

The Ivy Lee list

The Ivy Lee method caps a list at six tasks, written the night before and ranked in order of true importance, with one additional rule: you don't start the second task until the first one is finished. It dates to 1918, when productivity consultant Ivy Lee offered to work with the executives at Bethlehem Steel Corporation for free, telling CEO Charles Schwab, "Unless it works. After three months, you can send me a check for whatever you feel it's worth to you." Three months later, Schwab paid Lee $25,000, worth well over $500,000 today, and the six-task method has been cited as one of the oldest documented to-do list formats since.

Sample (written the evening before):

1. Finish the client proposal
2. Call the accountant about the filing deadline
3. Review the contract redlines
4. Schedule the team's one-on-ones
5. Order the replacement part for the printer
6. Respond to the vendor's follow-up email

This format fits anyone whose list is normally twenty items long by nine in the morning. The hard cap and the strict order are the whole point; a list that's merely short but unordered still lets you bounce between items without finishing any of them.

The project kickoff list

A project kickoff list is a capture pass for a new project, written before you try to sequence anything, so the first real task doesn't get lost among a dozen half-formed ideas about the whole thing. You did a brain dump. What to do with the list next covers sorting a raw capture like this one into something actionable once it exists.

Sample, for "redo the kitchen":

• Scope: cabinets, counters, and the floor; not appliances this round
• Budget ceiling to confirm before anything else happens
• Who's involved: contractor, partner, no one else yet
• First actual task: get two contractor quotes by Friday

The list stays useless as a daily checklist until that last line, the first actual task, gets pulled out and moved onto today's list on its own. The kickoff list's job is to hold the scope and the decisions so they don't have to be re-remembered every time you open the project again.

The reset list

A reset list is what you write the day after a to-do list has been ignored for a week or more, and it works differently from the other four: instead of listing what needs to happen, it starts by listing only what's actually overdue and genuinely still matters, dropping everything else without guilt. Keep a low energy task list for bad brain days covers a related shorter format for days when even this version feels like too much.

Sample, after a rough week:

• Pay the credit card bill (due in two days, the only true deadline)
• Text the friend you canceled on, to reschedule
• Everything else from last week: deleted, not carried over

Three lines, and the third one is the part most people skip. A reset list that quietly carries forward twelve abandoned items from the old list has stopped doing its job. The list is just as overloaded as before, only with a new date stamped on top.

Picking the format for the day in front of you

None of these five formats is a replacement for the others; each one answers a different kind of day. Today, next, later: a three list system that stays small is worth pairing with whichever sample above you pick, since it gives you somewhere to put the items each format didn't have room for, rather than forcing them all onto the list you're using today.

This article shares practical organizing ideas. It is not medical advice. For diagnosis or treatment questions, talk with a qualified clinician.