To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!

You have a limited amount of time to get things done during the course of a given day. It follows that you should limit the scope of your to-do list to accommodate this constraint. If you only have four hours at your disposal, make sure the items on your to-do list can be completed within that time frame. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for failure.

The right verbs encourage execution. They encourage you to take action. The wrong ones do the opposite. They encourage procrastination. Verbs like explore, plan, and touch base lack specificity. As a result, they’re less effective than verbs like research, draft, and call. These latter choices have more impact because they imply specific actions. They leave nothing open to interpretation.

How To Create The Perfect To-Do List. The purpose of a batch list is to organize all of your tiny tasks in one place. Tiny tasks are items that take less than 10 minutes to complete. The idea is to batch them together and address them during a single work session.

Laundry Sandra’s birthday cake Accounts receivable report Car tires Breakfast with parents Notice how the tasks lack emotional and motivational power. We can fix that by adding verbs to them: Start a load of laundry Buy a cake for Sandra’s birthday Finish the accounts receivable report Check the pressure in my car’s tires Call parents to plan breakfast date Notice how the verbs (start, buy, finish, check, and call) tell us exactly what to do. There’s no ambiguity. You don’t have to guess at the type of activity the task involves.

No longer. I now organize tasks based on various contexts: by project, type, and location. I maintain multiple lists accordingly. (Note that these lists are

The simplest way to get through your daily to-do list is to assign a “why” to each item found on it. Know the reason the item is on your list. Determine why you need to get it done. Write the reason down next to the task.

The more options we have, the less capable we are to decide between them and the more anxiety we experience as a result.

motivate us to take action and finish tasks.

This is called decision fatigue. It’s a state in which you’re less able to make good decisions because you’re mentally exhausted from making decisions throughout the day. In other words, your cognitive resources have been exhausted. You’re running on fumes.

Do you assign deadlines - a specific date rather than “by the end of the month” - to each to-do item?

They write down (or record online) every task that comes to mind. But they fail to associate these tasks with specific goals. Consequently, they end up spending their limited time working on to-do items that matter little to them in the long run.

The point is, defining tasks too broadly is detrimental to their completion. Their vagueness ensures they linger. If you’re having trouble completing to-do items, check whether they can be broken down to smaller tasks.

The point is, it’s difficult to know whether you should tackle a to-do item without knowing its contextual details.

Without such context, it’s difficult to know which tasks deserve your immediate attention. In fact, it’s difficult to even know if you’re able to work on a particular task given your circumstances.

Deadlines are the enemy of procrastination. They motivate us to take action and finish tasks. They also help us to gauge the effectiveness of our time management efforts. If we’re consistently getting important things done on time, we must be doing something right.

41% of to-do items are never completed. 50% of completed to-do items are done within a day. 18% of completed to-do items are done within an hour. 10% of completed to-do items are done within a minute.

your cognitive resources have been exhausted.

Ato-do list without deadlines is a wish list. Nothing more. Without deadlines, we lean toward inaction. Deadlines do more than just impose

But the threat of feeling overwhelmed will always be present. If it gains a foothold in your mind, it will siphon your enthusiasm, extinguish your motivation, and block your creativity.

Many people do a brain dump of every task they need or want to get done. They record everything on a single list. The problem is, they neglect to categorize these tasks and put them on separate lists according to context, priority, and urgency.

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

goals, how can you know whether you should work on it? If you don’t know whether you need access to certain resources to work on the task, how can you know whether working on it is even possible at a particular point in time?

If you don’t know how long something will take to finish, how important it is, and how it contributes to your

Items are written down without any indication about the time needed to complete them, their priority, and the roles they play in achieving specific goals.

Your task list isn’t a tool for getting everything done. Rather, it’s a tool that will ensure you get the right things done.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Call Bob on the phone Email Bob Send Bob a text message Stop by Bob’s office Leave Bob a message in his inbox There’s value in choosing the precise verb that defines the task. Again, be specific. Will you call Bob or email him? Will you text him or stop by his office?