“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
Whether the interruption is an illness, an out-of-town visitor, or that hectic time at work, all of a sudden you have gazillion things to do to catch up. You write some of your thoughts on Post-It notes, but even more are swirling in your head.
How do you make the swirling stop? That’s what a TO DO List can help with as long as you retain control and don’t let The List become your master.
These are the steps I take when I am overwhelmed with a multitude of disjointed tasks.
- Grab a large pad of paper and write down everything you can think of that needs to be done. Include crucial details, but not mindless minutia. This is, in essence, “a brain dump”. It’s easier to deal with the task at hand once you have all of your thoughts together in one place.
- Put a * by the tasks that have a deadline and write in the date due.
- Next consider your priorities. Hopefully, you have taken time in the past to formulate what is most important to you. Do you value relationship building, increasing your income, growing independent children?
- With deadlines and priorities in mind, label each task you have listed with A – very important, B – somewhat important, C – must be done sometime, or D – would be nice. For larger projects, you might have to list smaller parts in the order of completion, and use A, B, C to designate that timeline. NOTE: Reconsider tasks you have designated of D importance. Can you just cross them off?
- Rewrite your list, grouping like tasks together: phone calls, emailing, research, etc. You will want to do these activities together, completing all while you are on a roll. See Batching blog.
- You have prepared your Master TO DO List.
You are now ready to write your TO DO List for today. Each day pick your top 3 tasks (or group of like tasks) to get done. Concentrate on taking those all the way to completion. There truly is no such thing as a “partial victory.”
After 5-7 days you will be surprised how much you have crossed off your Master TO DO List and how accomplished you feel!
I recommend doing this process weekly, ideally making your Master List on Saturday or Sunday. That way you will know what you want to get accomplished in your week ahead. You will be in control of your time and your TO DO’s, not the other way around!