How To Complete Your To-Do List Every Day
Make four simple changes to the way you create your to-do lists to always complete all your items.
Want to promote your product or service to 11,000+ One Productivity readers? Reserve an ad here.
Eliminate the Obvious Stop writing down the obvious things you do on a daily basis, like “get lunch” or “cook dinner”. There’s no reason to keep these things on your daily list
Break Your List in 3 Sections Organize your to-dos into three sections: - Digital Quickies: short tasks that you can complete on the laptop or smartphone - Work: the most critical tasks for the day - Real World: things that can’t be done at work or digitally, such as errands
Complete the Least Time-Consuming Digital Task in the First Hour of the Day Digital tasks don’t have to happen in real-time (an email can be sent whenever versus a phone call that requires two people to be available at the same time). They can be taken care of in a few minutes each. Start your morning with a win by completing the easiest digital-quickie
Add Time Estimates to Big Tasks Adding a simple time estimate, for example, “Do FastCo News reporting – 3 hrs” allows you to allocate enough time to get those tasks done
Start using this new format to complete every task on your daily lists.
It’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you scratch the last item off and toss that yellow Post-it in the trash.