It’s relatively easy to make a good to-do list. Anybody who knows how to read and write can do it. Making a good one however is an entirely different thing.
In making your to-do list, it’s important to remember why’re you doing it. The single best reason to do it’s because you want to optimize personal productivity by becoming more efficient in terms of managing your tasks, which requires both focus and organization. By just efficiently organizing the things you need to do, you’ll be able to focus better on the things that truly matter.
Only tasks
When you list down the items for inclusion in your to-do list, you must know how to tell the difference between tasks, goals and projects. Your to-do lists should only contain tasks and not projects or goals. When you mix together tasks and projects in your to-do lists, you may get confused. By limiting the items to tasks only, you’ll be able to better organize and focus only on things that really matter.
Take for example your spouse or any loved one. Say you want to make him or her feel appreciated and loved on their birthday, which’s just around the corner. Is that a task or a goal? That’s right, it’s a goal that you want to achieve. Now, how do you plan to achieve that goal? Maybe you’d like to surprise him or her with a party at home, which’s a project. and what’re the actionable steps required to complete the project? These would include canvassing for a venue, choosing what foods to serve, cooking the food, printing the invitations, sending the invitations and preparing activities for the party, among other things.
Imagine if you can how it’d look like if you include projects and goals in your to do lists. If you can’t, it’d probably look like this:
- Just throw surprise party;
- Also choose food to serve;
- Make spouse or loved one feel appreciated & loved;
- Please send invitations;
- Also print invitations;
- Canvass venue; and
- Don’t forget to prepare activities for the party.
Doesn’t it look rather confusing? Further, doesn’t it run the risk of doing some things twice? Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Smaller tasks
Good to-do lists are those that can be managed well. The best way to make them as such is by breaking down tasks that’re complicated and big into much smaller ones. To the extent possible, include only those tasks that can be done in one sitting and by you alone. Let’s go back to the surprise party example, shall we?
Let’s take the task “prepare activities for the party”. You can actually break this down further into even smaller tasks and ask help from other people such as:
- Carefully researching popular party games;
- Buying materials for those activities; and
- Facilitate activities.
As you can see, these smaller tasks can be done in one step or by you alone. As such, it makes your to-do list – at least for the surprise party – much simpler and clearer.
Labels
Now that you’ve broken down your tasks into simplest and most basic level, you must label them as much as possible with the necessary info. It makes your to-do lists even clearer and easier to manage.
Let’s refer to the surprise party example again. Let’s say you’ve limited the number of activities you’d like to conduct for the party to just 5. You can also label each of those 5 choices with information like “props intensive”, “little to no props needed” and “children’s games” or “adults’ games” so you don’t have to look further into their details in order to quickly categorize them and schedule them in the program. It may not seem much but when you’re doing a lot of things, even the few seconds saved counts.
Priorities
The final characteristic of good to-do lists is priorities. Each of these tasks is different and as such, they’re also not equal in importance or urgency. A good way of prioritizing our tasks is by using the late Stephen Covey’s quadrants that was popularized in his classic best-selling book How to Win Friends and Influence People. These quadrants are:
- I: Important and urgent tasks;
- II: Important but not that urgent tasks;
- III: Un-important but urgent tasks; and
- IV: Un-important and not urgent tasks.
Obviously, top priority should be given to Quadrant I tasks, such as bringing your child to the doctor after having on and off fever for 3 days now and paying your overdue credit card bills. Both tasks aren’t just important but need to be acted on now.
Second priority must be reserved for Quadrant II tasks because even if they’re not urgent, they’re important and neglecting them can have dire consequences. Examples of these would be bringing your car to the shop for periodic maintenance works like tune ups and change oils and regular exercise. Putting them off until they become urgent may already be too late and in these examples, may already cause irreparable damage to your car and health, respectively.
Tasks under Quadrant III should be given very little, if any, priority because while they may be urgent, they’re not important. Also not accomplishing these tasks only has minor repercussions, if at all. These include tasks like picking up a ringing telephone.
Lastly, no priority should be given to Quadrant IV activities because they’re both unimportant and not urgent. Why waste your precious time on them right? Life’s too short to waste time & energy on such tasks.
This’s a very important aspect of your TDL that you shouldn’t take for granted for herein lies the secret to focusing for greater personal efficiency and productivity. By focusing on the big-ticket items first, you could accomplish more for the same, if not less, time and other resources.
- Alternative: The Action Plan
Making a to-do list is basic among everyone from the wingers to the obsessive-compulsive. we’ve discussed at length at how to make a to-do list, but here are some tips to make sure the to-do list sticks. An action plan that makes you want to get up and actually do it!
- Pick a medium
To-do lists come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s all about what works for the individual. Maybe writing the tasks down on pen and paper is one of those ways. If so, you can also use digital apps to help make such to-do lists.
- Make multiple lists
It never hurts to be prepared and have a back-up. For the most part, a master list with all the long-term goals like cleaning the garage or finishing a due assignment a month from should be kept. There should also be a weekly project list; self-explanatory. Finally, on the most important lists to keep around should be the HIT list, or even high-impact task. That should include stuff needed to be done today like walking the dogs or picking up the dry cleaning. The HIT list will also never run out of tasks because some of them are required to be done daily, such as dog walking. Also, tasks on the master list and weekly list may pop up on HIT sooner or later.
- KISS
The acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid. and nothing’s more simple then avoiding to intimidate yourself scared and silly with a very long to-do list. You know, so long that it’s unreasonable to get it all done in 24 hours. A trick to having a simple HIT list is to put all the stuff you want to do that day and then cut it in half. There should also be 10 tasks or less on there, and what isn’t mandatory can go toward your weekly or master list.
- MIT
Another acronym, standing for Most Important Tasks. Please start the list with at two or more items that absolutely must get done today, so you don’t end up vacuuming instead of finishing a project report due tomorrow. Also even if the rest of the list stays untouched, the really meaningful stuff will get finished.
- Start easy
Be sure to stick a few simple items on the MIT list. Some good examples include “fold clothes,” “wash breakfast dishes,” and “shower”. You can even cross off silly stuff to help start the day feeling super-productive.
- Break it down
Goals such as “work on research paper” are much too vague & intimidating, meaning we’ll be too afraid to actually start tackling them. You can reduce the fear & make your goals seem more manageable if you break projects down into smaller tasks. So instead of an open goal like the original “work on research paper”, go for something specific like “write first half of chapter three” for Monday, and “finish second half” on Tuesday.
- Stay specific
If there’s anything to-do lists have in common, it’s they’ve the qualities of physical actions. Meaning, they can be finished in one sitting, and they’re the tasks only the to-do-list writer can do. For general projects that require a lot of time or some extra help, be specific about what to do for those steps to the main goal. Something like “write a cover letter for internship at World Wildlife Fund” sounds more specific and professional than just “save the animals”
- Include it all
For every task on the list, be sure to add as much information as possible so you can get the job done. Like if the task needs you to call someone, quickly add their phone number on the list to save time and effort looking for it later.
- Time it
Now that you’ve made the list (and checked it twice), go back and put a time estimate next to every item. It might even help to turn the to-do list into a kind of schedule with specific times and places. For example: laundry 4-6 p.m. at Suds and Stuff, clean out inbox 6-7 p.m. at Starbucks on 6th Ave. When time’s up, it’s up; there’s simply no spending six hours at the Laundromat.
- Don’t stress
Every master list has a few tasks that you want to do for days, weeks, and maybe years, but haven’t gotten around to. Then try to figure out why you haven’t done so in order to make the necessary steps to actually complete the task, or tasks. If you don’t want to “Call Uncle Pat” because of fear of getting stuck talking with him all day, then “Figure out a way to get off the phone with Uncle Pat.” The big task will seem easier and get done faster.
- Make it public
Sometimes the best way to stay accountable is to have someone watch over us. So, share that to-do list with someone by sticking it on a refrigerator magnet or setting up a digital calendar for the work team to see and access.
- Schedule scheduling
A tricky aspect to the to-do list is actually sitting down to make one. Pick a time every day to get yourself organized and get stuff done. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, crazy late hours while everyone else is asleep, please just make sure it works for you.
- Go in with the old
A way to easily boost productivity is to remind yourself how productive you were yesterday. A written list of everything that has been done the day before, even small stuff, can help convince you that you earned a pat on the back and can keep going.
- Start fresh
Make a new list every day so the old items don’t clog up the agenda or get forgotten. this’s useful to make sure you’ve something done daily and don’t just waste time decorating the paper with highlighter marks.
- Be flexible
Here’s a tip: always leave within 15 minutes of “cushion time” when making your scheduled to-do list or calendar. Also something may pop-up that throws off your tight schedule, like a flooding bathroom or a computer crash. The most important thing is to keep calm and carry on with deep breaths. Hopefully you can easily get a few MITS done beforehand too.
