How to Make a To-Do List that Doesn’t Suck
Having a handy to-do list help you stay organized and energized. A daily personal to-do list prepares you for a clear state of mind, better than a cup of coffee. When you are tempted to open your email inbox first thing in the morning or get bombarded by phone calls and meeting requests feeling distracted, a to-do list becomes critical directing you back to the priorities of your day. The satisfaction you get crossing off items one-by-one also adds to a sense of daily accomplishment for most of us.
Highly productive people embrace to-do lists as a simple recipe for success. My friend and mentor Rupinder uses a hand-written bi-weekly to-do list to organize work on multiple projects, office leadership initiatives, and important personal errands. As a senior project architect and manager of a respected firm, his workdays often are fully occupied with high-level management responsibilities. Preparing to-do lists became his way of navigating busy work life with a focused mind.
Below are some strategies to prepare an effective to-do list.
- Color-coding your tasks to give you a visual cue of the type of tasks. For instance, use Red for work, Blue for personal and Green for social events would help you quickly prioritize tasks and make adjustments as needed. Another great benefit of color-coding is for you to mindfully balance work task with personal events.
- Limit items for one day. Don’t overestimate how much you can accomplish in a day. Shoot for 3 to 5 tasks daily. Go for quality instead of quantity; meaninglessly chasing too many poorly executed tasks can only backfire you.
- Choose the right method and develop a habit of reviewing your to-do list throughout the day. Whether you are using pen and paper, or apps that have built-in reminders on your phone or your web browsers, the important thing is to develop your own system of self-tracking and self-reminding. As a technology addict, my personal recommendation is Todoist as it offers integration with most of the platform so I can have my notes with me wherever I go.
Originally published at https://2minutesgrowth.com on April 7, 2021.
