How to Create a Better To-Do List
Create a better to-do list by doing it the day before.
When I roll out of bed, the first thing I do on my way to brush my teeth is check my Blackberry to see if anything life-changing and critical has happened between the hours of 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. while I was sleeping. Apparently, Bernice has an emergency problem with her fonts and needs help using small caps. As a strong proponent of proper font usage, I have to help. By the time I’ve brushed for 2 minutes with an appropriate fluoride toothpaste, I’m already captured by the trivia of the day. Dashed are any hopes I might have had of doing anything reasonable with my time.
It seems we human beings like bright, shiny objects. When any distracting tidbit beckons, we let ourselves be derailed and we go bounding happily after the distraction.
Bernice’s email distracted me because I didn’t have anything else on my plate. Or to be more accurate, I had a lot on my plate, I just let her distraction come in before I’d committed to my activities for the day. Yet, in the moment, her plight was just way more compelling than sitting down to figure out what I should do today. After all, I know that one of the things on my to-do list today is to shop for a new shredder. If I were a spy, engrossed in international intrigue, that would be really fun! I could shred state secrets, thus dooming my political enemies and making me boss. But I’m not. I just want to shred my latest credit card statement. You can’t be too careful, you know!
How to Create a Better To-Do List
Today’s tip came from my friend Jameson Detweiler, who is about to launch a new productivity tips website called LessDoing.com.
The time to choose today’s to-do list is yesterday. Too late. But wait! All is not lost, since the time to choose tomorrow’s to-do list is today. Today, you have the objectivity to think clearly about tomorrow. You can simply recline in your hammock while having your feet massaged by your experimental automated foot massager made entirely out of environmentally friendly materials. As the corn husks gently caress your ankles, you can easily make a list of everything you need to do tomorrow. Do that now.
Identify the Most Important Task on Your List
Look over your list and choose the one thing you absolutely want to make sure you accomplish. Put a big star next to that one. For example, pre-order a copy of Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More from your favorite bookseller. That’s your super-special to-do item for tomorrow. When you get up and start to work, do your super-special item before you open your email, listen to your voicemail, or let anyone interrupt you. By choosing a super-special to-do each day, you can guarantee that you’ll make at least a little progress on that item.
How to Prioritize Your To-Do List
Most of us are way too optimistic about what we can accomplish in a single day. We think we can get our wardrobe redesigned, install a new hot tub, recruit a dozen zombies, and make chocolate bon-bons, all between the hours of nine and five. Nonsense. Even Bernice’s homemade caffeine-free herbal-enhanced turbocharger biscuits won’t make that possible.
Give your items priorities. People treat priorities like they’re this Big Thing. They’re not. Priorities are just your best guess as to the best order to do things in. Put important emergencies first. If a hole to the fourth dimension opened up inside your office and monsters are trying to come through to suck out your eyeballs, by all means, move that to the front of the list.
What comes next depends on your deadlines, your shifting work priorities, your mood, and the secret instructions given to you by Natasha, the mysterious Russian woman whom you encountered in the vegetable aisle of your local supermarket.
Double-check your priorities by reviewing your list in priority order. After each item, ask, “If I only got this far through my list, am I okay with everything after this item not getting done until the next day?” If the answer is “no,” shuffle the more important items toward the front of your list.
If you’re like me, no amount of experience will ever get you to limit your to-do list to a realistic amount of work. So accept that, and just make sure that you do the stuff you really have to do.
Use Your To-do List as a Touchstone
Tomorrow morning, get up and do the super-special item on your list. Only then should you check your email and voicemail to find out if anything urgent came in. Then spend the rest of your day with your to-do list somewhere in sight. I keep mine by my keyboard, so every time I glance down, I see it. When you see your list, double check that you’re working on something that’s somewhere on the list. If not, bring yourself back to the list.
One final tweak: if something comes up and you decide to work on it even though it’s not on your list, add it to your list. Then cross it off when you’re done. By reviewing your list at the end of the day, you’ll be able to see which interruptions or unexpected items ended up taking priority over your daily items. If you notice a pattern over time that certain interruptions consistently disrupt you, those can become candidates for working into your to-do list before they become interruptions.
Now I’m off to help Bernice again. Apparently she’s mastered fonts and is now working on tab stops. I may as well start adding this to my to-do list on an ongoing basis. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long month.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
RESOURCES
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Lessdoing – Jameson Detweiler’s web site on productivity tips
Woman with List image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
