#185: How to Build a Giant To-Do List With a Whiteboard & Magnetic Tape

June 3, 2020—Most productivity systems aren’t very productive. The to-do board is a simple tool that can help you plan less and get more done.

At this point in my life, I’ve burned through five productivity systems (with hundreds of variations in between). It’s been a strange, frustrating journey, and almost nothing has worked—except for this one thing…

I call it the “To-Do Board.” Basically, it’s a to-do list on a whiteboard. But instead of writing on the whiteboard, you put your to-do’s on individual strips of magnetic dry-erase tape.

Before we get to the how, let me give five reasons why this system works.

1. Distraction-Free: My phone is a distraction machine. Every time I try to use it as a productivity tool, I end up on YouTube or Instagram. A whiteboard is static. It can’t trick you into watching cat videos.
2. Low-Maintenance: Bullet journals have to be rewritten every day, which means that if you forget to plan ahead, your entire system falls apart. Whiteboard to-dos can be reused an infinite number of times by simply wiping off the checkmarks.
3. Easy Access: Productivity apps are great, but they exist in the digital world, which somehow feels like more work to access. I don’t have to “log in” to…