Contents
- 1. Keep a list in mind
- 2. Enter items that you cannot complete
- 3. List too many tasks
- 4. Don’t Break Big Projects into Small Tasks
- 5. Formulate tasks vaguely
- 6. Use your inbox as your to-do list
- 7. Don’t book time for rest
- 8. Write in tiny tasks just for the fun of crossing them out.
- Three books on time management:
Making a to-do list is an effective way to stay productive. However, if you start every morning with planning, but clarity does not increase, you continue to be distracted and forget about important things, you may be making one of the common mistakes.
1. Keep a list in mind
It sounds obvious, but this point is indispensable: if you do not write down the task, it is likely that you will simply forget about it. But by referring to the list, paper or electronic, you can keep your finger on the pulse and follow the plan.
2. Enter items that you cannot complete
“Be honest with yourself: if you know that your hands will not reach the task, you should not put it on your list, otherwise you will only feel a pang of conscience and be disappointed in yourself,” explains time management expert Laura Vanderkam.
Productivity expert David Allen agrees with his colleague and advises keeping a separate list of large-scale tasks that it would be nice to take on one day. So you will not forget about these plans and start implementing them when the resources appear for this — financial, time and emotional.
3. List too many tasks
“The secret is to keep the list as short as possible: just a few clearly prioritized items are better than an endless “sheet” that you can’t master anyway,” says Vanderkam. Don’t try to fit into the list all the things you need or want to do. Three to five tasks per day will be enough; cases for which deadlines are not running out can be rescheduled for other days.
“We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a day and underestimate what we can accomplish over the longer term,” says Mike Vardy, creator and host of A Productive Conversation, a productivity podcast.
4. Don’t Break Big Projects into Small Tasks
“When we divide a large project into small and achievable subtasks, we are no longer shackled by fear of the global and the unknown, we can take the first steps and track our progress,” explains productivity coach Grace Marshall. — The thing is that, even by closing even the smallest task, we get our portion of dopamine, and this helps us move on. It’s like with a computer game: we go through it level after level, solving problems one by one.
5. Formulate tasks vaguely
Vardy advises to write each task as specifically as possible: for example, not just «send an e-mail to client N.», but «send client N. up-to-date data on the project.»
“Imagine that you have to hand over your to-do list to a colleague. How would you describe each one to make his job as easy as possible? Your “colleague” in this case is you in the future. So give yourself such a gift in the form of clear instructions, without forcing yourself to remember and guess what exactly you had in mind.
6. Use your inbox as your to-do list
In this case, there is a high risk of getting bogged down and raking mail all day long, postponing important tasks for later. “Letters will most likely come in all day, and if you are distracted by each, there will simply not be time for everything else,” explains Grace Marshall. “When planning for the day, think about your global goals and how each task will bring you closer to achieving them.”
7. Don’t book time for rest
According to psychologist Lee Chambers, adding a five-minute breathing practice and/or a walk around the house to your to-do list is just as important as work tasks. “It’s important to give yourself the opportunity to rest, reboot and replenish the energy gap — without this, it is extremely difficult to remain productive: errors are inevitable, and burnout is possible in the long run.”
8. Write in tiny tasks just for the fun of crossing them out.
As we said, completing a task gives us dopamine and gives us the feeling that we have achieved something, but this does not mean that you should include a lot of unimportant and unimportant little things on your to-do list.
“The more tasks, the more time it takes to prioritize. Plus, we may feel like we’ve done a lot of things, when in fact we haven’t really done much,” explains Chambers.
So, the tasks that we must perform every day (for example, taking vitamins), the expert advises to collect in a separate list and hang it in a conspicuous place.