Make a to-Do List
If you’re anything like me, your to-do list is filled with urgent tasks like “getting a prescription” next to less time-sensitive tasks like “doing consistently”. The tasks of work are confused with the tasks of life; short-term projects end up on the list with ambiguous goals that I don’t want to forget about – it can get a little unmanageable.
Allison Rimm, a management consultant, writes in the Harvard Business Review that one way to get this system under control is to create three different to-do lists. The first is for “important but timeless projects,” the second is for “items to be completed today, ” and the third is Rimm’s “outstanding” list.
Perhaps the most important of the three, the Don’t Do List is used to “remind me of things that I consciously decided are not worth my time,” writes Rimm. “Writing them down won’t make them back on my to-do list.”
We’ve all heard it say that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. So one way to think about productivity is that it has more to do with what you’re not doing, as this post by author and subcatcher Jocelyn K. Gley outlines. A million things are fighting for our time and attention. The Don’t Do List helps us prioritize what we really want to spend our time and attention on.
“Taking the time to develop a clear mission statement — your personal goal — and a vision of what success looks like — is very important if you want to intelligently define what is important enough to get on your list in the first place,” writes Rimm. Here’s what she offers.
Reevaluate your to-do list
Determine what your goals are, or at least your goal for the day, and review your current to-do list. How does each task affect your goal? Do you need to do it today? Otherwise, you can opt out of it.
Then make a list of things you don’t need to do. “Once you acknowledge that you have more than just time to do all of this, it is actually a liberating concept. This awareness forces you to acknowledge that there are lower priority tasks that you will probably never complete, ”writes Rimm. “Delete those unnecessary things, put them on your to-do list, and commit to letting them go.” Waste no more time.
Obviously, there is an important caveat here regarding the tasks you need to complete in order to live / keep your job. Sorry, you still have to pay taxes (or wash, in my case). But tasks that are constantly on my to-do list, such as meal planning or finally reading all the old articles in my Pocket app, can probably be let go. These are simply not priorities.
From now on, each time you add a task to your list, ask yourself how it contributes to your goals. If it’s not, or it’s not important or urgent, add it to your to-do list.
“This exercise should energize and inspire, relieving you of feeling stuck, depressed, or resentful,” writes Rimm. “Clear decks to free up the time and space you need to do what you really want to achieve.”