Are you a To Do List person?
Photo by Michaela St on Unsplash
Here’s How to Power Up Your To Do List.
If you’re a To Do List person, you’ll agree that the dopamine hit you get when ticking that box ✅ is so satisfying. A To Do List is a straightforward way to capture all your swirling tasks pestering your brain until they are done and dusted. Here are some things to think about when you’re tackling your next To Do List.
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time. And it’s the same for a To Do List.
A quick way to overwhelm yourself it to look at your To Do List thinking that you need to get everything done in one go. A list 100 points long is not always useful, but what should you tackle first? Do you just work robotically from to 100? How can you make the list more digestible?
Prioritise your tasks by how urgently you need to get a task done. You can use the urgent-important framework (i.e. the Eisenhower matrix) to help you determine what to prioritise.
Start with the time sensitive stuff moving from the urgent/important to the urgent/not important stuff. Then work on the tasks based on importance as in the bottom two quadrants in the diagram on the left.
Now that you know how to prioritise your tasks using the Importance/Urgency framework, pick out 2-3 manageable tasks you can or need to address by the end of the week (and maybe an extra low hanging fruit/more enjoyable task to give you a boost). By the end of the week you’ll impress yourself with how you’ve checked items off the list.
Keep it alive
To have an effective To Do List, you need to engage with it every day. Sounds obvious, right!? But this is often overlooked rendering your diligently compiled list useless. Make a ritual of starting your day by checking out your list. Tidy it up by updating deadlines, add in relevant new information and crossing those tasks off the list.
Go digital
There are a number of online To Do Lists or similar task manager products that can help you manage your tasks. Microsoft has one, Google has one, Canva has one, Atlassian has Trello…there are countless more. When using a digital To Do List, look for how it integrates with other apps. Does it work with your calendar? Can you easily extract tasks from email and other documents? How can it remind you to follow up on tasks?
If this is all too much to take in, remember that a good ol’ Word or Google doc will do the trick.
Quick fire tips for those who NEED to write their To Do List
Create a list with an empty check box for a bullet point (so you can go back and tick the item off your list.
Keep a separate page for High-Medium-Low priority tasks
Leave enough space between points so you can write any additional ‘sub-task’ that may come up/update notes to track progress. It’s a live page to interact with, not only look at.
Note any deadlines for your tasks.
When the page gets too messy (from ticking off all the tasks you’ve completed…you super charged efficient whizz) take the time to write a new list (transferring any incomplete tasks from the previous list). A little frustrating but worth the time.
There is always so much To Do! If you find yourself so busy you might want to delegate some of your copywriting tasks to a skilled copywriter. Get in touch with write.copy.click. to talk about your copywriting To Do List!