# Apple Reminders Organizational Guide

Apple Reminders has grown well beyond a simple checklist. With **templates**, **sections**, **board view**, and **smart categories**, it now offers organizational tools that rival dedicated project management apps. The problem is that most people never discover these features, and their Reminders app stays a single flat list of tasks that gets longer every week. This guide walks through every organizational feature in Apple Reminders and shows you how to set up a system that actually works.

## What is the best way to organize Apple Reminders?

The best way to organize Apple Reminders is to combine **lists** for broad categories, **sections** within those lists for grouping, **tags** for cross-list filtering, and **templates** for recurring workflows. This layered approach keeps your system flexible without becoming overwhelming.

Most people fail at organization because they create too many lists or not enough structure within a single list. The sweet spot is 5 to 8 lists covering your main life areas (Work, Personal, Shopping, Projects, Someday), with sections inside each list to break tasks into meaningful groups. Here is a recommended starting structure:

- **Inbox** — quick capture for everything, processed daily
- **Work** — sections for each active project or responsibility area
- **Personal** — sections for errands, home, health, finance
- **Shopping** — use the Groceries list type for auto-categorization
- **Projects** — one section per project with subtasks for steps
- **Someday / Maybe** — ideas and tasks with no deadline

If you want a full productivity framework built on this foundation, see our [guide to building a GTD system with Apple Reminders](/content/blog/gtd-system-apple-reminders/index.html).

## How do I create and use templates in Apple Reminders?

**Templates** let you save any list as a reusable blueprint, preserving all tasks, subtasks, sections, tags, and relative due dates. You create a template once and generate fresh copies whenever you need that workflow again — no rebuilding from scratch.

To save a template on iPhone or iPad, open the list you want to save, tap the three-dot menu ( **…**), and select **Save as Template**. Give it a descriptive name and tap Save. On Mac, right-click the list in the sidebar and choose the same option. Your templates are stored in a dedicated Templates section accessible from the Add List screen.

To use a saved template, tap **Add List**, scroll to the **Templates** section at the bottom, and tap the one you want. Reminders creates a brand-new list pre-filled with all your template items. You can edit the generated list freely without affecting the original template.

**Pro tip:** Set relative due dates in your template tasks (like "1 day after creation" or "next Friday") rather than fixed dates. When you create a list from the template, the dates adjust automatically based on when you generate it.

## What are the best Apple Reminders templates to start with?

The most useful templates are ones you repeat at least monthly. Here are seven templates that cover the most common workflows, frequently recommended across productivity communities including Reddit:

| Template            | Use Case                         | Key Items                                                            |
|---------------------|----------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Weekly Review**   | Process inbox, review goals      | Clear inbox, review calendar, update projects, plan next week       |
| **Travel Packing**  | Trip preparation                 | Documents, electronics, clothes, toiletries, chargers                |
| **Meeting Prep**    | Before important meetings        | Review agenda, prepare notes, test tech, send materials             |
| **Morning Routine**  | Daily habit tracking             | Exercise, journal, review today's tasks, meal prep                  |
| **Project Kickoff** | New project setup                | Define scope, assign roles, set milestones, create timeline         |
| **Content Publishing**| Blog or social media            | Draft, edit, create images, schedule, promote                       |
| **Home Cleaning**    | Weekly or monthly cleaning       | Kitchen, bathrooms, floors, laundry, declutter one area            |

Start with the Weekly Review template — it is the single most impactful habit for keeping any task system organized. Build it with 8 to 12 checklist items covering inbox processing, calendar review, and next-week planning.

## How do sections and columns work in Apple Reminders?

**Sections** divide a single list into named groups, giving you a second level of organization without creating separate lists. They function like folders within a list, and you can collapse them to reduce visual clutter when you are focused on one area.

To create a section on iPhone, open a list, tap the three-dot menu, and select **New Section**. On Mac, right-click in the list area and choose **New Section**, or use the keyboard shortcut **Option+Cmd+N**. Drag tasks between sections to reorganize, or drag the section headers themselves to reorder groups.

Sections are visible in both list view and **column view** on Mac. Column view displays each section as a horizontal column side-by-side, which is essentially how a kanban board works — more on that next.

## What is the board view in Apple Reminders and how do I use it?

The **board view** (officially called **Column View** on Mac) displays your list sections as side-by-side columns, turning Apple Reminders into a kanban-style board. Each section becomes a column, and you drag tasks between columns to move them through stages of a workflow.

To enable it on Mac, open any list that has sections, then click **View > as Columns** from the menu bar, or click the view toggle icon in the toolbar. On iPhone and iPad, the equivalent is available in iOS 17 and later — open a list with sections and look for the column layout option in the view menu.

A typical kanban setup uses three to five columns:

- **To Do** — tasks not yet started
- **In Progress** — actively working on
- **Waiting** — blocked or delegated
- **Done** — completed (clear periodically)

This is especially effective for project management within Reminders. Rather than using a third-party tool like Trello or Notion for simple project tracking, you can manage the entire workflow inside Reminders where it syncs across all your Apple devices automatically.

## How do I set up an Eisenhower Matrix in Apple Reminders?

The **Eisenhower Matrix** is a prioritization framework that sorts tasks into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. You can build it in Apple Reminders using a single list with four sections.

Create a new list called "Priorities" or "Eisenhower Matrix," then add these four sections:

1. **Do First** — urgent and important (deadlines, crises)
2. **Schedule** — important but not urgent (planning, skill development, health)
3. **Delegate** — urgent but not important (some emails, certain meetings)
4. **Eliminate** — neither urgent nor important (distractions, busywork)

Switch to column view on Mac and you get a visual four-quadrant board. As new tasks come in, drop them into the appropriate quadrant. The key insight of this framework is that most people spend too much time in quadrants 1 and 3 while neglecting quadrant 2 — the important-but-not-urgent work that drives long-term results.

For added power, combine the matrix with **tags**: tag tasks with #urgent or #important and create Smart Lists that filter by those tags across all your lists, not just the matrix list.

**Pro tip:** Save your Eisenhower Matrix list as a template. At the start of each week, generate a fresh copy and populate it during your [weekly review](/content/blog/gtd-system-apple-reminders/index.html). Archive the previous week's matrix to track patterns over time.

## How do categories and checklists work for daily routines?

**Categories** in Apple Reminders refer to the automatic grouping within Groceries-type lists and the broader organizational categories you create through list types and tags. For daily routines, the most effective approach is a dedicated **daily routine checklist** using subtasks and recurring reminders.

Here is how to build a daily routine system:

1. Create a list called "Daily Routine" with sections for **Morning**, **Afternoon**, and **Evening**
2. Add your habit items under each section (exercise, meal prep, review tasks, wind-down)
3. Set each item as a **recurring reminder** — daily at the time you want to do it
4. Save the list as a template so you can reset it if needed

When you complete a recurring reminder, it automatically reappears for the next occurrence. This makes Reminders a surprisingly effective habit tracker without any third-party app. The built-in **Today** smart list aggregates all your daily items alongside other tasks due today, giving you a unified daily dashboard.

For bullet journal enthusiasts: Apple Reminders handles the daily log and collection functions well. Use tags like #log, #idea, and #task to replicate bullet journal signifiers. The key difference is that Reminders handles migration automatically through recurring tasks and smart lists, which is the part of bullet journaling most people abandon first.

## What are the best practices for organizing Apple Reminders?

After testing dozens of organizational approaches, these are the practices that consistently work across different use cases and productivity styles:

- **Use an Inbox list for capture, not organization.** Everything goes into Inbox first. Sort it during a daily or weekly review — never during capture. Speed of capture is more important than perfection of sorting.
- **Keep lists under 8.** More than 8 lists becomes hard to maintain. Use sections within lists instead of creating new lists for every sub-category.
- **Pin your 2-3 most important lists.** Pinned lists stay at the top of the sidebar. Pin your Inbox, your primary work list, and one personal list. Everything else lives below the fold.
- **Use tags sparingly.** Tags are powerful but easy to over-engineer. Start with 3 to 5 tags maximum (#work, #personal, #waiting, #someday). Add more only when you notice a genuine filtering need.
- **Review weekly.** No system survives without regular maintenance. A 15-minute weekly review to clear your inbox, update project statuses, and plan the next week is the single habit that keeps everything working.
- **Delete aggressively.** If a task has been sitting untouched for 30 days, either do it now, schedule it, or delete it. Stale tasks create psychological drag and make your system feel unreliable.

These principles apply whether you follow [GTD](/content/blog/gtd-system-apple-reminders/index.html), the Eisenhower Matrix, or a simpler personal system. The framework matters less than the consistency of using it.

## How do I keep my organized Reminders visible while working?

The biggest limitation of Apple Reminders on Mac is that the app window competes for screen space with everything else. You can build a perfectly organized system with templates, sections, and board view, but it all falls apart if you never look at it during the day.