Todo Lists
I've been struggling with todo lists for most of my life. The cumulative weight of all my undone's had finally become more than I can bear. It's when I realized I could literally work 24 hours a day for a month and still have things left on my list.
I was relieved to discover the movement to nix todo lists altogether.
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Traditional to-do lists often contain an overwhelming number of tasks without indicating how long each will take. This leads to stress and dropped balls.
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Instead of a to-do list, block off time on your calendar for each task based on how long you think it will take. This provides clarity on what you can realistically accomplish.
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Leave 50% of each day unscheduled as a buffer. This gives you flexibility to add urgent tasks and accounts for inaccurate time estimates. Reduce the buffer as you get better at estimating time.
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Treat your inbox like a to-do list. Open each email, estimate the time to respond, and block that time off on your calendar. This clears your inbox and schedules all tasks.
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When committing to finish a task, share back the calendar date with the requester. This closes the loop and allows you to update them if the timeline changes.
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Scheduling tasks directly on your calendar eliminates ambiguous deadlines and to-do list anxiety. The calendar becomes the to-do list with clear commitments.
Begin with the end
The way we think is backwards from where we want to go. We can arrive much faster when we begin with the end. I discovered that by writing from the bottom up, I get to the point of it all much quicker.
Going Further
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Pavr A to-do list without deadlines is a wish list. The simplest, most low-tech way to start gamifying your work and getting more done is by attaching rewards to checklists. Since ticking off a checklist item triggers the same dopamine release as achieving a game objective, it's a great parallel, and you undoubtedly already use checklists to keep track of what you've done and need to do in the future. Roll two dice when a task is checked off the list, and whatever the number on the dice shows, you give yourself the corresponding reward. Examples: Give yourself include an extra 15 minute break, a snack, or a walk around the block. Let's look at some apps I've tested out over the years...
Remember The Milk
Google Tasks
NotePlan
TimeFinder
TickTick
Habitica
This week I'm trying to ingrate Habitica
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Getting Started Four elements
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Habits Actions that you want to reward or discourage and that you don't do on a regular schedule. Examples: take a stretching break (positive) or chew your nails (negative).
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Dailies Actions you want to do once a day or on certain days of the week. At the end of each day, you will take damage for uncompleted Dailies. Examples: Go to bed on time (every day) or do laundry (every Saturday).
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To-Dos One-time or infrequent activities. Examples: Send dad a birthday card or pick up package at post office.
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Rewards Treats, indulgences, and other rewards. You can purchase these with the gold you get for completing tasks. Rewards can be in-game (e.g., better armor) or real-life (e.g., buying a new book). Available in-game Rewards will automatically be added to the Rewards section, and real-life Rewards can manually be added.
My accountabilibuddy and started with the idea of a Rhythm Register (A concpet I learned in the book by Darren Hardy). After a few months, here are the metrics I defined for myself:
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PubWriter
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AuthorDock
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Orphaned client outreach
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UkuleleSongbook
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Client Work
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Yoga/Meditation
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Speaking/Teaching
Todoist
Are you ready to become a todoist? The premium version is $29/year, but includes some awesome tools worth paying for:
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Location based task reminders!
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Extension between Habitica & Todoist
Todoist tutorials
Epic Win
Our lives are full of quests. Remember that birthday card, send that email, or drag ourselves to the gym on a regular basis. Trouble is, sometimes we’re having too much fun doing other virtual stuff like hunting down rare items in World of Warcraft or leveling-up in Facebook games, to remember the stuff we’re supposed to be doing. EpicWin is an iPhone app that puts the adventure back into your life. It’s a streamlined to-do list, to note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin. Rather than just mentally ticking off your chores, completing each one improves and develops your character in an on-going quest to level-up, gain riches, and develop skills. By getting points for your chores it's easier to actually get things done. We all have good intentions but we need a bit of encouragement here and there. Doing the laundry is an epic feat of stamina so why not get stamina points for it?! Learn more here.
Stop Making To-Do Lists
Don't focus on more - focus on more of what grows your business. Want to Grow Your Business? Stop organizing your day based on time. Think in terms of priorities, instead. Once you do, you’ll progress faster toward your business goals. When you’re launching, running or trying to grow a business, every day is a hustle. Even if you, like me, aim to maintain a solid work-life balance, your schedule can fill up before you even reach the office. For many of us, our first instinct is to create a to-do list and organize our days into neat blocks of time. We feel a sense of accomplishment the moment we strike through another item on our list. But, as it turns out, this isn’t the most effective way to manage our workday. For starters, most people vastly underestimate how much time a project will require, a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy. It’s the same thing that causes home renovations to take way longer than planned and entrepreneurs to fall behind on revenue projections. Guy Kawasaki, the chief evangelist of Canva, shared his method for dealing with this all-too-common problem: “As a rule of thumb, when I see a projection, I add one year to delivery time and multiply revenues by 0.1.” It may come from overconfidence in our ability to get things done, but in the end, we waste valuable time on scheduling when our efforts could be redirected elsewhere. That’s why I propose focusing on priorities instead, and figuring out how to achieve your personal peak performance. Here are three strategies I recommend.
Prioritize the essential.
The first step is identifying your priorities based on importance. We tend to focus on the most urgent tasks or on accomplishing as many things as possible. Instead, we should dedicate more to the things we care about and do them better, an idea that Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. At the same time, we shouldn’t feel bad about demoting less essential activities that ask for our time. As McKeown writes: “Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, ‘What do I have to give up?’ they ask, ‘What do I want to go big on?’ Of course, as an entrepreneur, there will inevitably be times when you have to handle an urgent task right away and delegating is out of the question. And still, other times when a task falls somewhere in between, and it’s challenging to decide its level of priority.
Read Prioritize | PubWriter
Related: Eisenhower’s decision matrix
The first quadrant is a code-red quadrant: tasks that are both urgent and important, and you should tackle the same day.
Quadrant two includes tasks that are important for the long-term, but not urgent -- the things that need your personal attention, but not right away.
Tasks that are urgent but not important fall in quadrant three -- perfect items for delegating to other members of your team.
Finally, activities that are neither important nor urgent fall into the fourth quadrant. You know them well: searching for another productivity app or scrolling through your Twitter feed. You should avoid fourth quadrant tasks entirely unless they become more essential in the future.Identify your prime times.
The next step involves capitalizing on your natural rhythms. All of us have ebbs and flows of energy throughout the day, including our prime times -- those precious hours when our thinking is crystal clear and we do our best creative work. For me, those periods are early mornings and early evenings -- that’s when I tend to work on the big-picture areas of my business that only I can do. By scheduling our priorities during our prime times, we tackle our most important tasks when we’re on top of our game -- and that’s how real progress happens. Studies have shown that the timing of a project can have a significant impact on cognitive performance. So, if you consider yourself a “morning” person, the same project you crush at 9 am might be a struggle at 4 pm. According to Daniel Pink, author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, 75 percent of people experience their days in three stages: a peak, a trough (aka, a lull), and a recovery period. The other 25 percent experience it in reverse: recovery, trough, then peak. If you’re not sure when your prime times happen, try keeping a journal for a few days and recording your energy levels every hour or so. It may seem like a lot of homework, but you’d be surprised at how quickly you’ll start to recognize your natural patterns.
Establish the boundaries of your schedule
There are two types of schedules: a manager’s schedule and a maker’s schedule. A manager’s schedule follows the traditional approach, with meetings and other tasks organized on an hourly basis. Makers, on the other hand, see their day in terms of projects. They stop working when they’re satisfied with their progress; not when the next meeting begins. In an ideal world, managers and makers would work according to their preferred schedules. In the real world, we work on teams and have to coordinate our schedules with others’. And while managers and CEOs often work on manager’s schedules, creative types -- designers, programmers, UX specialists, writers, etc. -- tend to work on maker’s schedules. For innovation to happen, it’s important to enable makers to thrive, even in a manager’s schedule environment. Some entrepreneurs do that by choosing certain days for their manager schedule, that way they can dedicate whole days to creative, “maker” work. But most of us can’t go offline for an entire day, and that’s fine. A few hours of uninterrupted work each day is usually enough. I work according to a managing schedule in the afternoon and as a maker during the first half of the day when I block in precious time for deep work. And I encourage our employees to do the same.
Reimagine your day
Work backwards! This is what the Merlin Principle is all about. When we prioritize essential activities and work according to our natural rhythms, we see results sooner. Though we can’t ditch the clock entirely, we can carve out undisturbed time to find that sacred state of flow. Consider it a new way of tackling each day - giving ourselves permission to do the work that fulfills us, rather than just filling our hours with work.
Write it Down
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HANDWRITING MAKES IT STICK Research proves that handwriting provides significant cognitive benefits such as improved memory retention and focus. Even though digital tools may seem convenient, writing by hand helps root the tasks in your mind better.
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CATEGORIZE BY SCENARIO Not only prioritizing but categorizing tasks according to different aspects of life aids organization. Aim for separate lists like workday tasks, personal goals or family duties rather than merely distinguishing urgency levels. Start with one master list if categorization seems daunting initially; then split into multiple shorter ones.
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INSTANTANEOUS IDEA CAPTURE Don't limit creating to-dos to specific brainstorming sessions; jot them down immediately upon conception. Habitual real-time note-taking ensures no task or ingenious idea gets forgotten! Even uncompleted items help maintain daily thought awareness; eventually guiding priority-setting while refining your method over time.
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TENACIOUS TASKS IN TINY BITS Big priorities can overwhelm anyone - break them up! If public speaking makes you nervous: set research topic first, write outline next followed by script creation and lastly rehearsing in sequence as per distinct steps definitely make big things smaller and manageable.. Following these diverse strategies would undoubtedly transform your productivity game plan!
Go Further