Task List Template: From a List to Work You Can Share

A good task list template is short: a heading for each group of work, and under it one line per task that starts with a verb, names the outcome, and says how you will know it is done. For a team, add two things to each line: one owner and a priority. Keep the list to what you will actually do this week, rank the top few, and move everything else to a “later” section so it stops competing for attention. Two templates, a filled daily example and the point where a list should become a shared board are below.

What makes a good task line

Most lists fail line by line, not as a whole. “Website” is a topic. “Taxes” is a worry. Neither tells you what to do when you sit down for twenty minutes. A task line that gets done has three parts:

1. A verb. Call, draft, send, fix, book, decide. The federal plain language guide on digital.gov↗ (opens in a new tab) says it plainly for all writing: active voice “makes it clear who should do what,” and verbs are what give a sentence direction. A task line is the shortest instruction you will ever write, so the verb matters most.
2. An outcome. What exists or has changed when you finish: “Draft the October newsletter,” not “Work on newsletter.” Working on something never finishes; drafting it does.
3. Done-when. A few words that make the finish line visible: “Send the landlord the repair photos, done when he confirms he has them.” If you cannot say when it is done, the line is a project, and it needs to be split into tasks that each can be.

Done-when is the same idea software teams formalize at a larger scale. The Scrum Guide↗ (opens in a new tab) calls it the Definition of Done, “a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product.” You do not need the formality for a personal list, but you do need the habit: decide what finished looks like before you start, not while you are tired at the end.

Two quick tests catch most weak lines. Could someone else pick this line up and start without asking you a question? Could you finish it in one sitting, or at most a day? If the answer to either is no, rewrite it or split it.

A task list template for your own work

This is the version for one person. It works in a notes app, a text file or on paper, and it is also the shape a board import expects, which matters later.

# Task list: week of [Month day, year]

## Top three this week
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [how you will know]
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [how you will know]
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [how you will know]

## [Area: Work / Home / Money / a project name]
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [ ]
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [ ]

## [Another area]
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — done when [ ]

## Waiting on someone
- [ ] [What you are waiting for] — from [who], asked [Month day]

## Later (not this week)
- [ ] [Anything that is real but not now]

The “Top three” section is what turns this into a daily task list template as well. Each morning, copy up to three lines from the areas below into it, and treat everything else as optional that day. The “Waiting on” section keeps other people’s promises out of your head; the “Later” section keeps good ideas without letting them crowd the week.

A task list template for a team

A shared list needs two more pieces of information per line, and one rule. The pieces are an owner and a priority. The rule is that each line has exactly one owner. The US Digital Service’s Digital Services Playbook↗ (opens in a new tab) makes the same point about whole services: there must be a single product owner with the authority to assign tasks and make decisions. At the scale of a task list, two owners means each assumes the other has it.

# [Team name] task list — updated [Month day, year]

## [Group: a project, a client or an area]
- [ ] P[1-10] [Verb + outcome]
      Owner: [one name]. Done when: [ ].
- [ ] P[1-10] [Verb + outcome]
      Owner: [one name]. Done when: [ ].

## [Another group]
- [ ] P[1-10] [Verb + outcome]
      Owner: [one name]. Done when: [ ]. Blocked by: [ ]

## Nobody owns these yet
- [ ] [Verb + outcome] — raised by [name]

The “Nobody owns these yet” section is the honest part of a team list. Unowned work exists on every team; the only question is whether it is written down where someone will see it and claim it, or lives in a chat thread until it becomes urgent.

A filled example: one person’s daily task list

# Task list: Tuesday, October 6, 2026

## Top three today
- [ ] Send the Hendricks quote — done when it is in their inbox
- [ ] Fix the broken signup link on the pricing page — done when a test
      signup reaches the welcome email
- [ ] Book the van inspection — done when there is a confirmed slot

## Work
- [ ] Draft the October newsletter — done when Sam has the draft to review
- [ ] Decide whether to renew the booth for the spring fair — done when
      the answer is sent to the organizer

## Home
- [ ] Pay the water bill — done when the payment shows as received

## Waiting on someone
- [ ] Revised floor plan — from the architect, asked October 1

## Later
- [ ] Look into a second supplier for packaging

Notice what is not there: no “email,” no “admin,” no “catch up.” Those are activities that fill a day without finishing anything. If they matter, name the outcome: “Answer the three customer emails about late orders.”

Grouping and priority

Group by where the work belongs, not by how you feel about it. A project, a client or an area of life are all good groups, because when you sit down to do client work you want every client line in one place. Keep groups to a handful; if you have fifteen, some of them are really one.

Priority is a separate question from group. The simplest useful version is a number where 1 is the most urgent, which is how the priority glossary entry defines it: how soon a task should be done. Three habits keep the numbers honest:

• Only a few lines get a 1 or a 2. If half the list is urgent, nothing is, and you are back to picking by mood.
• Rank again when the week changes, not every hour. A Monday pass and a quick look each morning is enough for most people.
• Urgent is not the same as important. If you keep confusing the two, sort the list once with an Eisenhower matrix and let that tell you what to delete or hand off.

When a list should become a board

A list is enough while one person does the work and the only states that matter are “not done” and “done.” The trade-off is covered in detail in Kanban board vs to-do list, so here are just the signals that you have outgrown the list:

• Several people edit it, and you keep asking “are you on this?” because the list cannot say what is in progress.
• Lines sit half-done for days and you cannot see which ones, because the only marks are an empty box and a tick.
• Someone outside the team keeps asking where things stand, and answering means rewriting the list as a status update.
• An AI assistant is doing some of the work, and you want its changes on the same list, signed as its own.

What a board adds is exactly that middle state. The Kanban Guide↗ (opens in a new tab) describes the first practice of kanban as “defining and visualizing a workflow”: the steps work passes through, made visible so everyone sees the same picture. A list shows two states; a board shows every step in between.

Turning the list into fenbs tasks with Add many

On a fenbs board, Add many takes the list you already have and turns each line into a task, with a preview before anything is created. The team template above pastes in as it is: each bullet becomes a task, the indented line under it becomes that task’s note, and when the paste contains bullets, the headings are treated as section labels rather than tasks.

- [ ] Send the Hendricks quote
      Owner: Dana. Done when it is in their inbox.
- [ ] bug: Signup link on the pricing page is broken
      Owner: Sam. Done when a test signup reaches the welcome email.
- [ ] Draft the October newsletter
      Owner: Dana. Done when Sam has the draft to review.

• Paste one group at a time. Project, category, lane and priority are set once for the whole batch, so a group becomes a project or a category in one step.
• Every task is a feature, an enhancement or a bug. Start a line with bug:, feature: or enhancement: to set it for that line; the rest take the kind chosen for the batch.
• The tasks land in the lane you choose, and from there move through To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed, which is the middle state a list cannot show.
• Priority runs from 1 to 10, where 1 is the most urgent, so the numbers from your list carry straight across.

Be clear about what fenbs does not have. There are no due dates, no assignee field you can set, no checklists inside a task and no recurring tasks. Write the owner and the done-when in the note, as the template does, and keep a repeating list such as a weekly review as a text you paste in again. For a personal board with a few sample tasks to start from, copy the personal to-do template.