To-Do Lists
You've heard the saying “what gets scheduled gets done” - I whole-heartedly believe this from my own experience. I am the queen of to-do lists for EVERYTHING! You can ask anyone who works with me, grew up with me, or probably that has met me for even a few minutes. I have paper ones, electronic ones, calendar ones but here I'm going to help you simplify these things in a way that has worked best for me. Hopefully at least part of it will work for each of you as well.
First off, I always write my lists first as a huge "brain dump" of everything that has to be done that week, for a certain project, etc. and then break it into what day/week it needs to be done.
From here it changes based on if it's something for my business, myself or my family. For work, I put these items in a day-planner on the day that each task needs to be done.
The idea being that I open that calendar each morning when I sit down to work, do the tasks on it (or on a good day - get them done earlier in the week) and then close it up without it running over into family time.
Those who know me know that I have trouble with these boundaries so I tend to carry it around and sneak in any chance to mark something off the list BUT I'm going to encourage you not to unless you have to. Try to close it up at the end of your “workday”, whatever that may be.
I treat my client appointments differently. Those are electronic so that if I get an email on the road or at home I can get back to them quickly. For me clients are money and I need to be efficient at scheduling them always.
For my personal to-do list and my family to-dos I write it all out in a master list and write them down when they come to me but then they go into my phone electronically and I update each week so I always have them with me. If I can sneak 5 - 10 minutes during my regular day to complete a task on that list, then that's great and I HAVE IT WITH ME ON MY PHONE! The first step for those of you new to having a to-do list is that you have to actually have it on you, thus the electronic ones is a great idea! Some things happen every month i.e. mortgage is due, air filters need changing, etc. These items go in under repeat the 1st of every month and I have never forgotten them because of this so things that always happen should be put in this way. I love to test out new apps for this and my new favorite is Wunderlist because it's easy to use, can show me my daily, weekly, and monthly to-dos and I can separate my to-do list by task i.e. personal, vs. side businesses vs. cheering etc. I can also have it sync automatically with my phone, computer or iPad so it's always up to date!!
One thing I've started doing recently is taking this a step further and I feel so much more productive.
This is going to seem crazy to some of you but planning ahead will ensure things get done in time, you don't miss deadlines, and that your productivity skyrockets while your stress decreases.
I have started taking the to-do list items and then scheduling them into my calendar for that week i.e. if I need to write a blog post it's not good enough for me to have it on a list that I may not look at if I'm swamped at work, but if it says that's what I'm doing at 6 PM on Tuesday I am 95% more likely to actually do it. Why? It goes back to the first line - what gets scheduled gets done. I am a HUGE proponent of time blocking and will discuss in another post!
I know I've already lost some of you because it's too much planning compared to what you are used to but try to take at least one thing from this if it's just to create a written to-do list and try to get those things done. I will challenge you to make it electronic and to start scheduling at least one of those items to see if it gets done before the other items. I bet it will and when you enjoy that sense of accomplishment and feel less stressed and cluttered and aren't carrying around 20 sticky notes, you'll want to keep doing it!
