Some days The List is longer than the day.
We all have our moments (or months) when our to-do list gets too long, too big, too scary we begin to take on the qualities of a squirrel halfway across the street. Frozen in the headlights halfway in between two tasks (or 4 you are trying to multitask) is not the way to be productive. Screw productivity, it’s no way to be happy.
There are lots of ways for you to step away and calm the overwhelm. I’m sure there is a blog post out there to help you do that. But let’s talk about when you have to step back up to the plate and face your to-do list. It always helps me to rewrite my to-do list, or write it out for the first time if you have been trying to keep it in your head. So I’m going to share my to-do list re-working process (that isn’t just procrastination). As a note, all of this can be done digitally if you are that kind of person, but I prefer a good old-fashioned legal pad. I find really serious list-making needs wide open spaces and my planner won’t cut it.
Externalize. Start by brain-dumping everything rattling around your head that needs to get done. You can add to your existing list and fill it up. This part probably won’t look pretty, you are simply adding every last thing that you have to do.
Prioritize. Abandon your list for just a moment and pull out (or pull up) your priorities. These might be your list of goals for the year, your area of focus for the quarter, or a project that you know you want to finish (or make serious progress on) this week. Use these priorities to identify which project or action you need to put the most focus on. You can think about it as the things you must do in order to feel you had a productive day. Go through your to-do list and circle a handful of things that are top priority. (Keep in mind that more than 6 top priority tasks in one day is generally unrealistic and for me, with a 7-month-old in the house, I limit myself to 3 a day).
Systematize. Okay now you have literally EVERYTHING you need to do laid out and you have highlighted what will make the most difference in your world….. but let’s be honest it is still a mess. Now is the part where we are going to rewrite them. I am a big fan of the Eisenhower Decision Making Matrix where you organize your tasks based on Importance and Urgency (four categories: Urgent & Important =Priority, Urgent & Unimportant= Delegate, Not Important but Urgent=Schedule, Not Important & Not Urgent=Delete). However, I find it lacks some functionality for my everyday list. So here is my variation. If you are using paper fold your sheet down the middle so you have two tall columns. (If you are doing this digitally, you will end up with 6 categories or tags.)
On the right side of your paper, you have three categories to put tasks into. Each task on this side will have a box for you to check when it is completed. If you delete a task for any reason it gets a line through it and if you have to move a task to a different category, I generally use white-out.
Top Priority: This gets all the things you circled as most important (Urgent & Important & Aligned with goals)
Routine Tasks: Things that are timely and important but not the big sexy top priority projects. This category is great for the things that are urgent and important and need to be on your list to be sure they get done on time, but they are recurring or routine so you don’t want them clogging up your top priority bucket. For example, I need to write a blog post for my own channels or a guest blog pretty much every day but I don’t want one of my top three tasks to always be BLOG, another example might be making dinner, or responding to important emails.
Low hanging Fruit: This is my favorite category. It doesn’t matter how urgent or important a task is, if it is less than 5 or 10 minutes to complete it goes here. This category is great because it cleans up your to-do list quickly and gives you a bucket of quick wins to pull from. When you feel like you can’t get anything done, nail down three of these to get your productive juices flowing. When you have 10 minutes between zoom calls, knock one of these out. It also gives you an awareness around how you spend your time. If you regularly clear the low-hanging fruit list but never finish your top priority list, that is why you feel like you don’t get anything done.
This Column is the list you will have up in front of you throughout the day (or week) for you to reference when working through your day. Consider this your working side.
The left side will contain the following three categories and won’t necessarily have checkboxes.
Future Projects: These are the things that are important and need to get done but don’t need to be done right now. I keep this list close at hand to add to throughout the day/week and then use it as the starting point for my next list. Make sure these are all definitely important. Some of your priority tasks may end up in this category if they aren’t timely.
Delegate: Anything that needs to get done but doesn’t have to get done by me goes here, regardless of how urgent or important it is. I delegate as much as possible. I still add check boxes next to these and I check them off once I have delegated them (I save up tasks to give them out at staff meetings). Once the task is completed by the person I assigned it to, I cross it off. If the task needs to be deleted then out comes the whiteout.
Daydream: Some things that are rattling around in our brains are not yet fully formed into a concrete task. “Figure out how to get more medium followers” is not really a clear task (psstt if you made it this far you should follow me). These things go in the daydream category. They are things I should be thinking about while I make dinner or researching while I wait for my pet to be done at the vet. Initiatives I haven’t fully committed to and ideas I need to flesh out go here. This category gives you a place to jot down things that will eventually turn into tasks but don’t yet have that check box feel. This prevents you from diving down a rabbit hole of research and planning when you have important things to do. You know it is on the daydream list and when you have some spare time and brain space you can direct it to one of these. AND you have a whole bucket to pull from when your tasks oriented world is making your brain numb and you need to reenergize with some creative problem solving, learning, and daydreaming.
The left side of your paper becomes the out of sight out of mind side of your task list (I usually fold it out of sight as well). Those items don’t need your immediate attention, but they are not forgotten or lost. You can flip out that column to add new future tasks update the progress on things you have delegated, or pick something to ponder while you sit on the toilet.
TA DA now your to-do list is nicely organized. You know what needs to be done soonest and don’t have to worry about forgetting about everything else. I hope you find this way of organizing things helpful to you.