To Do List Mastery - Make an Actionable To Do List that Actually Works.

1. Introduction: How often do you feel overwhelmed and disorganized in life, whether at work or at home. We all seem to struggle that time management in some area of our life. One of the most common phrases besides, I love you is, I don't have time. Everyone suggests working from a to-do list to start getting your life more organized. But why do these to-do list don't work all the time? First, your to-do list is the graveyard of important but not urgent tasks. To-do list should be called nagging, which lists a series of task you hope to accomplish without a specific plan as to venule get them all done. How many items on your current to-do list have been there for several days, months, or even years. What usually happens is that you either get so overseeing everything on your list, which leaves you feeling worse than you did before, you make the list, but are completely stuck on how to execute it effectively. Do Do list can really work for you. But if you're not using them effectively, they can actually leave you feeling more dissolution and stressed than you did before. Think of a filing system. The concept is good. But if you merely filed papers away with no structure or system, the filing system will have an adverse effect. And this is the same with a to-do list. You can put one together, but if you don't do it right, it's a fruitless exercise. So welcome to the course on do-do mastery. Give you a to-do list, a makeover, and get more done. So what is a to-do list? The definition is a simple one. It's a list of tasks you need to complete are things that you want to do. To-do list are a great way to keep track of your outstanding tasks. But they can be very poor motivators. They often end up too long, too short, too vague, too confusing. Overcome it, it still and forgotten. And even to meticulously planned. It doesn't seem like a complicated practice. Writing down a few things you want to get done each day. But so often it ends up being complicated. Traditionally, they are written on a piece of paper or posted notes and act as a memory aid. As technology has evolved, we have been able to create a to-do list with Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, to-do list apps, Microsoft ToDo and Google to-do list to name a few. So what is it that we want to accomplish? Having a list of everything you need to do written down in one place means you shouldn't forget anything that is important. By prioritizing the task in the list, you plan the order in which you're going to do them and can quickly see what needs your immediate attention and what tasks you can leave until a little later. But then why do to-do list hamper our success? And most of the time they don't get accomplished. Let's look at some of the statistics over here. 41% of their to-do list items are never completed. 50 per cent of the to-do list items are completed within a day. Many within the first hour of being written down. 18 per cent of the to-do list items are done within an hour. Ten per cent of the to-do list items are done within a minute. And 15% of the dentist started as to-do items. In other words, people aren't that great at completing their to-do tasks. Tasks that do get completed or done quickly, and tasks that are reported as done don't correlate with the plan to do tasks. So what's in it for me in this course? The objectives of the course is twofold. First, we will try to understand why do to-do lists fail in first place. And then we will go ahead and learn how to give you a to-do list, a make over, so you achieve everything on your to-do list. So grab a pen and paper and give yourself the gift of a gum and clear mind, unloading everything in there and onto a list. As of now, you're now going to learn all the tools you need for making your to-do list work. Knowledge is useless until it is applied. So let's start implementing everything as we start learning to make an actionable to-do list that produces results. So what are we waiting for? Let's get started. 2. Why To Do List Fail - Part 1: So let's look at why do to-do lists failing first place. Now, before we learn to build a foolproof, actionable to-do list, it is very important to understand why they fail in first place. We need to understand that when we carry around long list of items, it's one way to remember them, but it's also a constant reminder that there are many things that we still need to deal with. No wonder. We feel no wonder at night, we collapsed, exhausted. We get sleepless nights. Feel more stressed than ever. Reason number one, too many to-dos. When you see too many options at once, you may become woven and want to give up. Even before you start. You don't have to write down every single thing that you do during the day. Only those tasks that bring you closer to a board report suggests that one person typically has more than 150 different tasks at a time that an executive's to-do list for a single Monday would even take a week to accomplish. Sounds like a perfect setup for a failure, isn't it? Over stuffing our list causes a continuous trauma of worry in our head. And this constant disquiet has negative effects in tackling the very tasks that are so important in our life. Most people find that a gender to-do list don't work because they made a big list of tasks which include everything that needs to be done in the next one hour to something that needs to be accomplished in the next five years. And as a result, they get so over just by looking at all the things they need to do, they don't know how to prioritize the items on list. They feel that they are continuously adding to their list but not reducing it. And there's a sense of confusion seeing home test mixed with professional tasks. Reason number two, not knowing your why. If you don't connect the tasks on your to-do list to your bigger purpose. They feel boring and balance and will lack any motivation for many of us do to list fields like shackles. They make us miserable and SAP or energy rather than motivating us to get more done. And this is because our to-do lists are too often just collection of boring, stressful, and tedious does. If you connect the tasks on your to-do list to your bigger purpose, David start feeling less boring than L and more important and motivating. As humans, we keep forgetting the vice or the purpose behind accomplishing important task. Consider adding a sentence to every task on your to-do list. That explains the value of completing that task. If you can clearly defined why a task needs to be done, you'll feel more motivated to complete it. So always start with the why. Reason number three. We don't categorize. We put all our goals in one single basket. And then when we see the basket overflowing with an accomplished work, we lose the motivation completed. We put all our goals in one single basket. Never let your task float around without their parents or their tribe. If you put every task where it belongs, your list will no longer be this never-ending, messy catalog of things to do, but a well-structured overview of your responsibilities. You see everything you have added the last weekend before. You see the big projects and the small annoying task in one view. And as the result, the list is tediously long. And if you feel like there is no way you could ever do all these things. Of course, this is going to freak you out because you don't even know where to start. And because you know, you can't possibly do all these things and you shouldn't, in fact, you shouldn't even think about the anti to-do list in one goal. Unclear categorization leads to unorganized plants, ideas and actions. Identify what you need, and then go ahead and categorize it. This will help you get the things done in a timely and orderly fashion. 3. Why To Do List Fail - Part 2: Reason number four, incorrect deadlines. The more time you give yourself to finish something, the less likely it is that you will finish it in the given time frame. The problem with humans is that we feel that we have all the time in the world. And we don't set hard deadlines and have the discipline to follow through a to-do list without them only gives you the permission to take your own time and at times not do it at all. We fail to take into consideration how long it really takes to do each activity, including preparation, cleanup. And then we even assume that we could double the amount of work just in case if we are running behind the deadline. Sure enough, we are going ahead and setting up ourselves for future failures. Reason number five, not being specific. If your goals are ambiguous, your outcomes will be to know what you want. It is very difficult to achieve a goal that is unclear. Ninety-nine percent of every to-do list that I have seen are nothing but incomplete list of unclear stuff. You'll see things like Mom, bank, dr. Well, good. But what's the next action? When you see an ambiguous item on a to-do list, it's easy to file it away into a mental I'll do later file, write down specific task such as take mom to the doctor, visit my dentist at six PM in the evening, set up a new savings bank account. Instead of just writing mom, dentist, and time. It is very essential that you are extremely clear with every task that make it on your list. Lack of clarity can make the task virtually impossible to achieve. For example, you may decide that one of your priorities for the day is to work on a book You are currently writing. You could write work on book, but this could mean a lot of different things. Finding a publisher, working on a cover design, outlining a new chapter. So you need to be very specific. A much better description of the task would be something like spent one hour brainstorming the premise of the book. When you're specific, you create clarity in your mind and that helps you gain focus. Failing to prioritize. Some items on your to-do list may take longer than expected. If you don't set the right priorities, they may give too much time to tell us that don't need that much attention. Leaving us with very little time for the larger task at hand. Some items on your to-do list may take longer than expected. If you begin with a low priority item, it may prevent you from completing more important tasks later. Number you are three must do objectives in order of priority, and aim to complete the first one before you go ahead and check e-mails in the morning, or move ahead to your next task. A short glance at your inbox may seem harmless to you, but it can quickly turn into a time soccer. One survey found that office workers actually spent 2.6 hours per day reading and answering emails. When you fail to prioritize, you sometimes become tasks that are not very important. Give them a lot of time. And as a result, you go ahead and miss out on bigger benefits in life. No room for uncertainties. Sometimes the to-do list just can't handle the changes that crop up because we can tell the future uncertainties happened during the journey. And being unprepared for them can sometimes make us lose our track completely. You're done. Tasks won't match up with your to-dos. If you're not great at formulating well-planned to do task to begin with. When you don't outline specific actions for your goods, but do take some forward steps that progress won't correlate with the original task. You can sort of check or cross off a task as completed. We also can predict many interruptions that happened during the day when international survey reported that most common reason for failure to get through a to-do list was unplanned tasks such as unscheduled goals, emails, meetings, or something that pops up. All of the sudden. Things pop up in a life in and out of office. Little and big fires to be pulled out at uncertain times. The to-do list can't handle the changes that crop up because we can't predict the future. Reason number eight, failing to review. Just as planning your day should come before starting your day. Reviewing your day should come after it. But failing to do these two things everyday, you set yourself up for a task management failure. Why to-do lists are useful for task organization. They're certainly not the magical solution for our many productivity problems. Otherwise, why do we even get so discouraged about how much we are getting done? Instead, reviewing and checking how much we achieve. Simply writing down what you accomplished provides a boost of motivation and insight that balances out the to-do list problems and shortcomings. Many a times we miss out on this basic elements. As there is, a mind is more stressed on the incomplete task in the list. Them to be motivated by the amount of achievement that we've managed to accomplish. 4. Make a To Do List that Works - Rules 1-3: Building the perfect to-do list. A to-do list is just a list of things you have to do. That means basically anything and everything can be on your to-do list. But just because you've written your to-dos down doesn't mean your to-do list is actually useful. Effectively tracking when your work is due can help you prioritize and get work done faster and odd time. But too often, that list of work to-dos is disorganized and disconnected from the actual work you're doing. Understood in the previous section why it leads to failures. Now let's take one step forward and give our to-do list a makeover and convert it into a powerful action list to accomplish more and get the task done on time. Rule number one, choose the right media. The first thing to do is to choose a medium to build your to-do list. You can create this list on paper or use an app on your phone. Not to-do lists come in all shapes and sizes. So it's all about what works for every individual. Some research suggests that writing information by hand helps us remember it better. But if you lost picked up a pen in 2010 via naught, there's a huge range of digital apps that can help you create personal to-do list. Some people might find that adding different colors for different types of tasks might help the routine stick. Others might go with white board are called boardroom. Whichever way you swing, make sure your to-do list takes a form that makes your brain happy. Reasons to choose a node, but no software incompatibilities. No heavy cost of purchasing apps. Less screen time. Crossing of a completed task makes it feel good. Reason to choose an app. Digital labs are accessible anywhere, at, anytime. They give us an option to sort and prioritize the tasks easily. They give us daily tasks, reminders. And last but not the least, task can be rescheduled with a single tap or click rule number to brainstorm all your tasks. Writing absolutely everything down, you will be getting it off your mind and onto a paper. It will ensure you don't forget anything. And hopefully it will also help your mind feel calm as you free your mind with all the heavy lifting that it was doing to stay productive and saying, start your to-do list with three entries. Something that you must do, something that you should do, something you genuinely want to do. This provides a good balance between your short-term and long-term goals and include something that makes you happy? No, your wife. The primary purpose of a to-do list isn't to get everything done? No. The primary purpose of the to-do list is to set your mind at ease so that you know what your responsibilities are. That's the main reason you should keep it. The close second, is this. A to-do list helps prevent you most urgent things from slipping through the cracks. It prevents you from dropping any major balls. That's because any good to-do list allows you to emphasize your most highest priorities in life. You're bigger purpose or the bigger goal that will help you reach your true benchmark of success. This way, even if you slip a quick recall on your bigger objective or your bigger purpose, we'll get you back on track. The running list of every single task you have on your radar will be referred to as your master list. Why should we have just one list when we can have many, creates, several list of things that need to happen. Something like a master list. Masterless lays out your long-term goals. If you need to clean out your closet and whatever's living in debt, one to sign up for a language class or need to move to a new apartment. Jot it all down on your master list. You can then also have a weekly project list. Now this should contain everything that needs to go down in the next seven days. Maybe you need to research which language to learn or which area to start your apartments, throw it in there. Last but not the least, the high-impact task list. This bad boy lets you know about the task that needs doing pronto, call on her birthday, pick up the dry cleaning or finished that presentation for tomorrow. Every day. See which items from your master list and weekly project lists should move to the hit list. You will find that big hitters from your master list stay to play a more active role in your day-to-day life. Rule number three, categorize and prioritize your tasks. Our brain gets all them when it sees a list of seven or eight options. And it wants to shut down. For this reason, you need to work from a different list, separate them into different categories, and don't have more than seven or eight tasks in each list. And prioritize the tasks in decreasing order of importance. Go ahead, take a look at your list and find out if there are similar tasks that you can batch process. This way, you can get certain tasks off your list faster and easier. You might have recurring tasks also on your list. But do you know how much time do they take to accomplish if you don't, make sure you do some time tracking to figure it out. This will help you plan your day better. As you know, how much time a task takes. If there is a certain time slot in your schedule when the task could be executed at the best. Giving you an exact figure on how many tasks you should have on your daily list is difficult. It depends on your situation. But I'm willing to say that anything between five to ten hours a day should be good enough to start off with. You need to understand that certain tasks are very quick, so it's easier to include more and organize your tasks. Uncertainties. Just makes sure that there are also important tasks on the list so that you're able to move on with your bigger projects as well. One rule that I would personally suggest is the 135 root. Don't make your to-do list longer than it has to be for your daily to-dos. Aim for one big thing, 3 million things, and five little things you can accomplish in one day. Alternatively, you can also use the three-plus to rule three big things and do small things. Or you can also use the 1plus two rule, which says do one big thing and two small things every day. Any variation is okay, as long as it keeps you on track and helps you move towards your bigger group. 5. Make To Do List that Works - Rule 4-7: Rule number four, weekly versus daily tasks. Let's say you have gone ahead and sorted your to-do list and deleted all your no value or nice to have tasks from your list and you still find it overwhelming. Consider using one of the prioritization techniques that we're going to discuss in order to go ahead and create an individual to-do list for each week or each day. Mit, the author of zen to dance, Leo Botha, recommend starting each day by picking between 13 tasks you'll focus on that day. These are your most important tasks or MITs, and you shouldn't work on anything else until those tasks are completed. The IV method at the end of every workday, stars to focus on for tomorrow, order them in priority from one to six, and then work on those tasks in priority order the next day until all the six tasks are completed. Once again, I would like to talk about the 135 rule. One in particular that has had a major impact on our productivity is the 135 root. Understand that you can't take completion endless number of things each day. So instead, accept that you can reasonably get one big thing, three medium things and phi small things done in a day. Create an individual to-do list for each week or day. Depending on the size of your tasks. You can complete these exercises at the beginning of each day or beginning of each week. Rule number five, break larger tasks into smaller ones. Instead of having lots of very large dust on your list, spent some time breaking those last task down into the smallest complete table components. What are the quickest way to get overwhelmed when looking at your to-do list is to have a list filled with monstrous task that will take weeks to accomplish. If you're already making narrow list, but I'm putting it tougher task. My suggestion would be to break that task down. Whether it's a full-on steps, you need to take. Jotting down important details that need to be present is completely up to you. Either way, this will allow you to ensure that you're getting everything done the proper way and that you're not missing any key details in this step. Instead of having lots of very last task on your list, spend some time breaking them down into smaller completable components. This will not only make it easier to plan your days and weeks, but it will also give you the satisfaction of seeing more completed items on your list, which should help you to motivate yourself to keep working your way through your list. Rule number six, make it visible. Make sure you're constantly seeing your to-do list. You may think that you won't forget anything or that you'll stay productive. But physically, seeing a list of tasks you need to accomplish can very light the motivational fire within you. Carry it around with you, posted on your bathroom mirror. Leave a copy in your purse or your car, just put it somewhere where it will be in front of your face. This will give you a brain at constant reminder on what you have achieved and what still needs to be achieved, keeping you motivated as well as on track to achieve your parenting goals. Sometimes, best way to stick with the plan is having someone hold you accountable, price sharing that to-do list, go ahead. Posted on the refrigerator, or set up a digital calendar that everyone involved in the project can access. This lets everyone relying on, you know, that you have a task at hand. Rule number seven, make it appealing. Now, this may sound superficial or unnecessary, but it can really help change the way you look at your to-do list. If you find you're not getting enough done because you forget what you plan for the day, or you're wasting time looking at your to-do list over and over during the day, tried drawing it instead. Research believes that maybe due to how many different scales we use when Troy, we have to imagine the item in our mind. Think about its physical properties and form to figure out how to depict it in our drawing and use our motor skills to draw it on a page. And if drawing isn't your strong point, you can also try using mindmapping tools. If you go ahead and search it on Google, you will find n number of mind mapping tools. Pick up the one that suits your needs. The visual nature of a mind map will help you create a picture in your mind of the things you need to get done. And you can also attach images to your mind map for even more visual cues to reference. When you're trying to remember what needs to be done. 6. Make a To Do List that Works - Rule 8-10: Rule number eight, track your progress. It can be extremely helpful to break down your big picture items into smaller tasks and then keep a track of your progress on regular basis. I list that you look at on a daily basis is a useless and effective to-do lists guide you throughout your day, which means you need to look at it very often. Look at it each morning to mentally prepare yourself for the day. Look at it after the lunch so you know what else you need to focus on for the rest of the day, revise it at the end of the day to reschedule the task that you missed during the day. Make a habit of looking over everything you have planned for coming week in advance so that you can better plan your time and make adjustment. Another good idea is to maintain a list. Dan list or anti to-do list is a list of all the tasks you have completed in a certain period of time. The purpose of this list is to remind you how much you have already done and to additionally motivate you when you feel you aren't productive enough to cross out some more tasks. When you feel down and not productive enough. Simply look at the list of what you've already done. Looking at your Dan list significantly help you with the motivation if you've already completed a lot of tasks but somehow forgotten their rule number nine, be kind to yourself. Self-discipline is a good thing. It's a part of maintaining balanced success and health. But so our pleasure, relaxation, relationship and Hobbes makes sure that among all the scheduling and listing, you block out some time for yourself, whether in the form of exercise, mindfulness are just sitting around in your pajamas playing your favorite video game. Your to-do list should be contributing to your happiness. Not dominating your life. Don't beat yourself. If you don't complete all the tasks in one goal. Getting up and trying again tomorrow is the male achievement. Always be a little flexible than being rigid with yourself. Don't beat yourself up for a 10-minute dealer. They important factor here is you stick to your task and got it accomplished. This gives you a bigger room. Should something just pop up? All of a sudden, maybe something like a washing machine overflows, the computer crashes or your vehicle breaks down. And if crisis does strike, the most important thing to remember is to stop and breathe. You're probably already accomplished at least one major important tasks. So you'll get the rest under the control. Don't worry, just keep moving. And last but not the least, rule number ten. Do not forget to celebrate. Every time you check something off your to-do list, you've accomplished something. That's a big deal. You should celebrate, even if it's a little pat on the back. We all need a little push now and then to get to work on completing art doodles. One way to get that magic is to create a reward task list. For each task on your list, there is something to look forward to. For example, finished top ten on to-do lists leads, and then take a 20-minute snap. You can also sort your task list by emotion or reward for more motivation. Something like watching a game, having your favorite latte, or going for a walk at the beach. When you accomplish a major milestone in your to-do list. Remember, a to-do list is an ultimate form of boosting productivity. Unlike many other tools out there, this one can incorporate multiple methods. Not only that, but it also takes a deeper look at abuse and how we work with the right techniques and the right tools. You'll be well on your way to make a better to-do list in future. The fact the to-do list is so flexible, allows us to use various methods and building blocks to make it a tool to help us improve and get so much done in our life. Now that we have come to the end of this course, I hope you will give this a try and see how much a to-do list can change your life for the better. Enjoy your success journey now, with a new face to your actionable to-do list. Happy learning, stabilised, and God bless you.