How to Create a Powerful To-Do List in monday.com (Free Template)

Are you looking to create a to-do list in monday.com? Well, you're in the right place because in this video, I'm showing

you the exact system dozens of my clients have used to make most out of monday.com. And if you're the type of

person that loves shortcuts, well, I got something for you because I created the perfect to-do list in a monday.com

template. And you can install it into your account for free by just clicking on the first link in the description.

And if after this video you still need help with a custom implementation, feel free to reach out to me. My details are

in the description below. So without further ado, let's get started. Okay, so we're here in monday.com and we're going

to start with the basics. So let's start by creating our first board. You can do that by clicking on the blue button here

on the left hand side. If you click on that button, it will ask you what you want to create. In our case, we want to

create our first board. So let's click on board. When you click on board, it will ask you to give the board a name.

Uh let's call it test to-do list or whatever you want to call it, of course. Then it will ask you what the privacy

settings will be. We'll dive into that a little bit later, but in real quick, main means that everyone in your account

can see the board. Private means that it's just private and for yourself. And sharable means that you can share it

with external people such as guests. Those could be freelancers, for example, that you want to include in your

project. Well, let's keep it at main for now. And this is something about item terminology. We'll dive into that also

within a second um so you understand it a little bit better. Let's keep it at items for now and click create board.

Then the board will be created which usually takes a second or two. And as you can see we have some yeah basics

here. Just as a quick reminder on how Monday works. This what you see here is a group. This is a group as well. And

all these things are items. So these could be tasks for example in your to-do list. Well let's start by removing the

second group by clicking on the three dots and then clicking delete group and then clicking delete group again to

clean things up a little bit. Then I'm also going to lead delete item two and three to also clean it up a little bit

more. So let's click delete here and click delete. So what are the basics? Well, the first thing that you need to

understand is that you need to have columns to put your data into. There are a few columns that are very important.

Some of them are by default in the system and some we can add ourselves. So let's start with that. The most

important or one of the most important columns is your person column to assign a certain person. If only you are

working on this to-do list and no one else, you can also remove this column. But if you're working on it with

multiple people because it's for example a marketing to-do list for the whole marketing team, then it's very very

valuable to have this column here. So if you don't want it, click on the three dots and click delete. But if you want

to keep it, that's perfectly fine. Then I personally, by the way, always recommend to have it in there because

you can also leverage in automations later on. And I'll show you in a second how that works. The next step is to have

a status column. And status columns also are by default in your board. They have some default labels, but to be honest, I

always miss a few. So let's adjust them a little bit. You can click here on edit labels to add your own labels. And yeah,

you can just click on a label, add information here. So working on it could for example be uh ready to work on it

for example. I'll keep it at working on it because I like that label. But you can just change it to whatever you would

like to change it. Let's um add a few more. So for example, let's give the gray one a name. I like call it draft.

Like to call a new one to-do. So something could be a draft like an idea. Hey, I still need to do this thing. And

to-do could actually be something that I find important and I thought about and actually want to do. I always like

waiting for input because sometimes I need input from my team, from clients, from external people, could be anything

we have which I find important. I like to give it a different color than green because on hold sounds more like a

ratting like not that good or not something I want to work on. So feel free to give it any color that you like.

And by the way, very good to know with those eight dots you can click on it and you can drag and drop them. This is very

helpful because it changes the order of those columns. So for example, I have my done column at the label at the top and

then it just moves upward. So for example, start with draft then it would go into to-do here and you can just

change it to whatever you want. Of course there's a few more I like. So done is is nice. Some people like to

call completed. I actually liked that term a lot. So, I'll just do that. I also like a term called archived or and

why I think archived is important is that often u it happens that you know I have a task but for whatever reason we

don't want to do it anymore but I don't want to mark it as done because then it when I look back at it I'm like oh I've

already done that task but maybe I never actually have done it but I just want to mark it as archived without archiving

it. Hopefully that makes sense. So let's let's give you an example. Let's say we were going to create a new logo and we

added all types of information in here. Uh and it's quite an important task. Then we decide to well our current logo

is fine. We don't want to work on it anymore. And I would rather mark it as archived so I can look back at it later

on uh rather than deleting or archiving the whole item because I then I don't see the item in my board anymore. So

that's why I like to do stuff like that. I think these are the most important ones. What I do recommend if you click

edit labels, if you click here on those three dots that you see with status, you can go to settings and customize the

status column. And what you see here at the bottom is show which colors indicate that an item is completed. Um, and I

will also mark the archived one as completed. And I'll show you in a second why. Because when you start using

deadline columns, this will be very, very important. And that's what we're going to do next. So, make sure that

anything that is related to completion is marked as completed here with those colors. Then the next one is date, which

is also there by default. I like to rename it to deadline. Makes a little bit more sense to me, but feel free to

keep it however you want to. And if you click on those three dots and you go to settings, you can actually set it as a

deadline as you can see here. And if you click set as deadline, now you can some interesting stuff. So your status dead

uh deadline and person column will be combined. So let's choose a status column which by default is our status

column and you can choose a person column if you want to. Let's do that as well. And then click connect columns

here. Now this is actually as you can see the the lines are are gone. It's now one big kind of well it's still three

columns but it's like merged. Uh, and this is super helpful because as you can see here, the deadline is April 10th in

this case and it has a it's overdue 4 days actually because it's working on it. That's a status. They have a word to

mark it as completed. You'd see that we are not overdue anymore. Well, we're still overdue, but that the deadline is

crossed and it's now actually been marked as completed, which is super helpful. It also has this column. So, it

shows you whether it was done on time or not. So, for example, yeah, this would tell you basically if your task was done

on time, which is super helpful. So, those are three very important columns, but of course there's more to it. I

would usually recommend to have a priority column as well. Uh, I personally like that and it also works

very well with your my work section, which I'll show you in a second. So, if you click here, you will see an option

called priority. If you don't see that, just type priority. It's basically a status column. It's the exact same

thing, but it just has some labels that are quite easy, like you don't have to set them yourself. Critical, high,

medium, and low. I personally like to do that a lot. Um because sometimes tasks with that are due on the same date, some

is just a little bit more important than the other. So it's great to have a priority column here as well. Um so this

is what I find very important in your first step on creating a to-do list. Now let's get um to the sub item part

because your tasks might be, you know, might need a little bit more subtasks to make it easier to understand what to do.

So let's say we're going to create a newsletter. If you then click on this icon, the arrow icon, it will show a sub

item section with very similar columns. So a newsletter could have a different sub item subtask could for example be

think of newsletter topic and then it could be write draft version of the newsletter and maybe review draft

version. Just an example. Same thing here. It's super helpful to give these their own name because the columns on

the item level can be different from the columns on the sub item level. You can also make them the same, of course, but

this is completely up to you. I often do separate ones, but in to-do lists, often stuff on the item level is the same as

stuff on the sub item level. So, yeah, I like to keep it the same. So, I go to settings here as well, also set it as a

deadline. Basically, do the exact same thing as what we just have done and that will work. You can also go ahead and add

your status labels here if you want to. Um, or you can also make sure that these are different. Completely up to you.

It's a very flexible system in that regard. So, that's great with regards to sub items, but maybe the word item

sounds a little weird to you. you would rather use something like task or project or something else. Well, you can

actually change that. So, instead of seeing item here and new item here, we can change that with the item

terminology. If you want to change that, go to the top right and click here. Then you click on uh the yeah the three dots

and click settings and go to change item terminology. If you click there, this will show you the thing that we also saw

when we started creating a board. So, you can give it a different name. I like to call it tasks in my case of a to-do

list. But as you can see, you can change it to whatever you want. And you can even add a custom name. So maybe, you

know, you have a different name for your tasks. Feel free to put them in there. Then click change. And as you can see,

it now says new task. It also says task here. Super valuable. Um, and this might not sound very valuable, but it's super

helpful to make it easier, especially for people that have never used Monday because they won't know what an item is,

but they will know what a task is. So very important one. Then one thing you might be thinking like, what do we do

with this group title thing? Well, I like to just change this to all tasks and just give it a different name. And

I'll show you in a second how I work with groups and how I think it this makes most sense. So to do that, let's

make some more tasks. So let's say YouTube video, YouTube video with a few typos. LinkedIn post and maybe YouTube

video too. YouTube video too. Let's also give this a proper name. And then let's say this one is a high priority as well.

This one is medium. And this one is more like low. And let's also give them all a deadline. Just some random values to

give you some, you know, an idea of what it's like and how it can work. Let's say these are our examples. Um, right,

pretty straightforward. I'll also assign all of them to myself just for the example. What we can now do, which I

absolutely love about Monday, is the group by feature. Here, as you can see, is the group by feature. And if you

click on it, you can visualize your data many different ways. And I find it super valuable. If you click here, you can

group it by a certain column. So, let's group it by the priority column. If you click there, as you can see, now all of

a sudden, we have more groups. We have a high group, medium group, low group, and a blank group. This is super helpful

because you can see instantly see what tasks are high priority and what tasks are probably low priority. It's a very

valuable thing to keep in mind. You can also change this. So, maybe you want to see uh low priority first and you

reverse the order. You can do A to Z. You can do it many different ways. I like to keep it in this case on order of

labels. And then I like to click on save as new view. So if you click there, you'll see a new view comes up here. And

you can think of board views as basically ways to visualize data. So in this case, we have a main table which is

where everything shows up that we initially created and in this case a table which is now prioritized or

grouped by the priority. So let's click here and rename the view to priority. And now it's super easy to switch. We

can even make this the default board view by clicking here and clicking where is it pin view. Now this is the default

of our board. I find this super valuable. If you then go back to the main table, we can also group by a few

other things. So let's group by deadline. Now you can see this week, next week, last week. Very easy to group

by deadline as well. Same thing if you want to show it. I usually probably let's say like earliest to latest here

more so I can see what was overdue and what still needs to be done in the next couple of weeks and months. We can also

save it as a view. So I'll call it for example um grouped by deadline and you can always go around play around with

this and you know change the order of course and whatever you prefer here you can put it in there. Then I want to give

you a few final cool tips. You can also create automations that trigger when an item is not done but is overdue. So let

me show you what that means. If you go to automate here at the top right, you can actually click here to add a custom

automation. And what we can do is we can say when and then we say date arrives. This one we first click on date and we

select the date column. So we say when a deadline arrives. So click on when a date arrives at a certain time. So let's

say 7:00 a.m. in the morning. And then we click on this plus icon and say and the status is something. So in our case

status is not completed. Then we're going to notify a person. So we're going to

notify let's say someone which could be me. But this is where why I like the people column. You can notify

dynamically based on who is assigned to the task. So we can say we're going to notify the person. So if I'm assigned,

it will send me a message. Then you click notify and you can type your own message. You could say, "Hi Patrick,

your task is overdue." And you can use variables here as well. So you could say task name is the item name, due date is

deadline. That's it. If you now click create automation, it will automatically send a notification to this person on

the day of the deadline if it's not completed. Well, you can use this logic to create a ton of different

automations, of course, like when the deadline arrives or 7 days before the deadline arrives. Great one as well. So,

let's do that one as well. Click an automation. Add automation and we say date arrives. What date will be deadline

again and we're going to this time say use this one. So, let's say 3 days before the deadline arrives at 7:00 a.m.

in the morning, we're going to notify Patrick. So let's say uh team member Patrick and say hi Patrick in three days

your task is due don't forget to finish it. So this could be a nice one as well. Stuff like this is super helpful and

it's very easy to create these type of automations in Monday. So I highly recommend that you play around with them

uh and that you use them. I have one final interesting uh feature of Monday that's super helpful in creating your

to-do list. There's a lot more that you also see in the template that I put available to download. But um what you

can also do is use conditional coloring. And conditional coloring is something that's easy, you know, to explain what

you're showing what it is. So if you click here on these three dots and you click on this uh color icon, conditional

coloring. So you could say, well, when a column, so let's say when a deadline is today or let's say overdue. When the

deadline is overdue, uh we're going to color the row in our case red. So now let's see if anything is overdue. No,

nothing is overdue. This one is overdue because it's not completed. See, it's not completed. If it's completed, it

will be it's not overdue. But if it's not completed and the deadline is overdue, it will be highlighted in red.

This is super helpful because you will instantly see the tasks that are overdue. And you can do similar things

like when it's well, let's use a few more. when uh the deadline is let's say in the next I think that's also one

where is it in the next 3 days mark it as maybe yellow maybe saying hey wait a minute it's almost due very important

well as you can see this one already turned yellow so it works quite well if you want to save this also click save to

this view keep in mind it's actually saved to your view and not to the other one so if I click here you won't see it

and here you won't see it either so you need to adjust it in every view if you want to this is the most important stuff

that you need to know. There's one final thing actually that I want to share with you because one of the things if you use

this as like your personal to-do list, you might always want to have certain values on this board. What do I mean by

that? Well, let's say you create this task, you and it's always assigned to you. You always want this to be assigned

to Patrick or you always want the priority to be medium by default or you always want the status to be to-do by

default. Stuff like that is possible. Just click here on these three dots again and then click on this one default

item values. If you then see this basically all the columns you have you can assign someone you can set a status

you can give a standard priority and then you can click save. If I create a new task task now you'll see that will

automatically enter information in all those columns. And this is actually a great thing to yeah make sure that

there's always some value in there and that you don't forget to enter more information. So I quite like those. This

is the most important stuff that you need to know about creating a to-do list. Thanks for watching this video. If

you found it helpful, please leave a like and if you have any questions, just leave a comment down below. I'll make

sure to answer all of them to help you as much as possible. Don't forget to download the template in description

below. And if you want more of these free monday.com tips, you can sign up for my free newsletter also in the

description below. If you need help with a custom implementation, you can always reach out to me. And you guessed it, my

details are also in the description below. Hope you like this video and I see you soon. Bye-bye.