Task List Limbo: How to Handle To-Dos that Never Get Done

You know the feeling—those tasks that seem to linger indefinitely, haunting your list day after day as you shift the due date for the fifth time. It’s like they’ve taken up permanent residence in your productivity space, refusing to budge no matter how many times you nudge them. Dealing with these requires a combination of reflection, delegation, organisation, and yes, a healthy dose of motivation.

Assess Task Relevance

First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room—should those lingering tasks even be on your list in the first place? It’s easy to fall into the trap of adding tasks without critically evaluating their necessity. Take a step back and ask yourself: Does this task really align with my work goals and priorities? Is it my responsibility to do it? Has my manager asked me to do it? If not, it might be time to bid it farewell from your list. If it’s really needed, trust me, it’ll find it’s way back to you.

Get Delegating

Some of those irrelevant (or only slightly relevant) tasks may be better suited for delegation. If you find yourself constantly deferring a task because it’s outside your expertise or responsibilities, see if you can pass the baton on to a colleague who can handle it more efficiently. What’s an annoying lingering task for you might be a quick end-of-day task for someone else.

Precision Matters

Sometimes, tasks linger because they’re too vague or ambiguous. Break them down into smaller, actionable steps to make them more manageable. Define a clear objectives and meaningful deadline for each task to avoid ambiguity and increase accountability.

Remember its Reason

Sometimes it might help to restate the task positively in terms of its reason or objective or negatively in terms of the consequences of not doing it. For example, you might have a task to clean up old records in your CRM and you keep putting it off. Rather than a task “Clean up old records”, you could rephrase it as “Stop old records cluttering up my daily views and slowing me down”. Which task would you rather do?

Rethink or Reimagine

Try to rethink the task’s premise—is there another approach or workaround that could achieve the same goal more effectively? Maybe you have a task to create a new spreadsheet to track some annual figures. Could you use another tool to do it instead? Does it need to be so complex? Why did you need to do it in the first place?

Create a Separate List

OK, so none of the above apply, you probably do need to do it at some point, but it’s unlikely the task is high priority enough to do be done anytime soon. To prevent these kinds of persistent tasks from cluttering your main list, consider creating a separate ‘limbo list’ or ‘parking space’ where you can stash these items. This way, they’re out of sight and you don’t constantly have to keep reviewing them.

Only Defer Once

If you do need to defer a task, use this as a rule of thumb—only defer it once. When you do defer it, make a note of the reason for the deferral in the task notes. Next time, if you find yourself deferring it again, consider whether you are just going through the motions or if there is a genuine reason to defer. Think of it like this—if you rearrange an appointment with an important client once, that’s probably OK; are you really going to cancel on them a second time, and a third…? If a task is worthy enough to stay in your list, give it respect and get it done. If not, well…see all the above!