7 Game-changing Questions to Improve Your To-do List Planning
The way you live your day is the way you live your life. Get better at planning and you will ultimately experience a significant change in your life.
One of the mind games we quite often play is “why didn’t I succeed to complete my to-do list… again?”. As a 10-years-old entrepreneur, I’ve been working very hard to improve my planning skills — let me share some of the insights and key findings in a form of a handful of questions to be asked at the end of each week at the retrospective.
#1 How did my daily activities related to my goals & long term plans?
Maybe instead of getting frustrated about not clearing your list, or otherwise, excited about clearing it out, you should ask this question in the first place: what pieces of my planning supported my long term goals? Let me remind you that to-do lists are not designed to make you feel good or bad, it’s a tool that should help you accomplish more complex goals.
Do the things that matter.
#2 Which tasks could have been delegated?
Do not fall into the temptation to skip this question. Yes, most likely you were the one capable of doing these tasks perfectly but assigning too much to yourself creates an obvious bottleneck that will keep you from going to where you want to be. It’s especially difficult if you are a first-time entrepreneur/manager but believe me, you will get nowhere near to achieving your goals if you don’t develop delegation habit. Extra tip: do not delegate a task, delegate responsibility.
Share the responsibility.
#3 What did I add on the way and why?
This question is the one that I started to ask myself from the moment we as a company started to become more agile, working in weekly sprints. The tool that we are using (Jira) is always displaying this popup “You are adding an issue that will influence this sprint’s scope — are you sure you want to do it?”. I believe every to-do planning tool should have something like this and since none of them (at least not the ones I know) has, you need to build a habit of asking this question every time while trying to add something to already planned week. And if you decide so, then pick up one task for exchange, don’t go too hard on yourself adding things as if time doesn’t matter.
Skip unnecessary tasks.
#4 Was it really that important?
Can you recall a week where you felt counter-productive and accomplished nearly nothing though spending your regular time at work? I bet it’s because of some unexpected issues that appeared to your calendar, delegated by someone else. It’s tempting to get into things that were not planned — excuses are plenty, but let me share my favorite: “let’s consider it a great warm-up before I dig into my plans”. And then you end up helping others stick to their plan losing track of yours. If you feel like helping, fine, but let’s plan it.
Don’t let them control your list.
#5 Why each of the task was planned this and not next week?
As simple as it may seem, maybe some of the tasks that are important were not that urgent to be scheduled for this week? My personal filter is following — I consider well-prioritized week when in my planning there is a mix of tasks:
- Strategic — so that I have a sense of moving bigger pieces forward. Dark side of overdosing them is a felling that your are constantly in progress with something, waiting for the results.
- Important quick fixes — so that I get a dopamine boost that keeps me going. But don’t get tempted to get your list full of these little monsters — it’s a trap that fuels your short term but create disalignment with the long term goals.
- Unlocking—tasks that let my team continue their planning. If things get stuck at your desk, you become a bottleneck of the team and it’s a frustration that consumes energy. If you feel like having the only tasks of this kind, means you are having too much roles in your company or your delegation skills seeks improvement.
Prioritize.
#6 What was not planned and I feel it should have been?
That’s a very tricky question that pushes me away from my comfort zone. There are usually things you know should be sorted out but for some reason, you don’t put them in your planning. Require too much of emotions, seems to be too big tasks, looks boring, you don’t feel prepared. The more you procrastinate the more stinky it will get on the way.
Clean before it starts to smell.
#7 Which tasks took me longer than I expected?
The moment I felt my planning improved significantly was the moment I found out all these years I’ve been missing so important & obvious piece — thinking on the calendar. Surely things like meetings were there but as managers, we all have other activities throughout the week and those really rarely are planned in the calendar. And this is a wishlist, not a plan. Why we forget about putting everything into calendars to represent them as blocks of time? 1. It takes time itself 2. Some of the tasks we don’t know how much time they might take (!) 3. Some of them we believe are too small to even bother planning them on the calendar. That’s how I’m gonna address these 3 most common objections:
- Time spent on planning usually saves you tons of time & frustration during execution
- If you have tasks you don’t know how much they might take, don’t plan to accomplish them, just plan some block of time you will spend on them in the upcoming week (chunk it down to sub-task you can estimate as we would say in IT ;)
- Bulk them in a 1 hours shot’s — believe me, it will help you a lot.
Map things out to the calendar.
Planning skills are getting improved over time & practice. They are essential to help you keep focused (filter out the distractions), mentally healthy, organized around different areas of your life thus happy and balanced.
What are the questions you tend to ask yourself at the week retrospective?
