Creating a to-do list

- In this video you're going to learn how to create a to do list using the XMind software platform. If you haven't installed XMind yet, check out the first video of this chapter. Let's talk about to do lists. You might love them or hate them, but everyone seems to have one. A to do list could make you feel overwhelmed, or it could be your key to productivity during the day. The exercise file included with this lesson provides you with a to do list template that you can modify to your liking. You'll notice right away that there are currently four tasks. You can easily change these tasks by double clicking on them. You'll also notice the green icon next to each task. This can signify that a task has been completed or partially completed. If you click on the green icon, you'll see that you can easily change the progress of a task from "Starting" to "1/2 Done", all the way through "Task Done". You'll notice that if you change it to "Task Done" a green check mark will show up. This feature makes it very easy to keep track of your progress for a variety of tasks. So how do we go about adding new tasks? Just click on the central node that reads "To do list" and then, under the Insert menu, click Topic. As you can see, this will add another task to your to do list. Another way to add a task which is probably a lot faster would be to simply press the Enter button on your keyboard. And if you need to delete something from your list, just press the Delete or Backspace button on your keyboard. And as we mentioned before, you can edit your tasks by simply double clicking on the text. And you can rearrange tasks by clicking and dragging them to different positions on your screen. Sometimes you may have a task that has numerous sub-tasks related to it. If that's the case, just click on the task you want to modify, and insert a sub-task. You can add as many sub-tasks as you like. Now let's think about the things we need to do another way. So let's start with a fresh to do list. I'm going to delete the current tasks. Again, I'm just pressing the Delete key on my keyboard to do this. Sometimes, the things we need to do are related to various parts of our life. For example, you might have tasks that you need to get done at work. Other tasks that need to get done at home. And, if you're a student, you may have tasks related to school. So notice how you can easily add these general areas and their related tasks. This gives you almost a bird's eye view of things that need to get done in your life. There are a variety of icon markers that you can add to each task. You can find these markers in the insert menu, or by simply clicking the red icon that looks like a flag, in the program's tray. You'll see that this allows you to add a variety of markers to any of the tasks. For example, you might want to assign a task priority, task progress, flags, stars, arrows, among many other things. Or if there is a specific due date associated with the task, you can use the month or the day of the week icon. And if you're using these icons a lot, you may want to click on the "More..." menu and that will add it to the side of your screen. There are many other features in this program that you may want to explore on your own. But as you can see in this template, you can utilize this program to visually organize the tasks that need to get done.