How Not To Do a To Do List

That dreaded to-do list is the bane of most peoples’ existence.

Sure it keeps us on track. It ensures that we don’t forget about vital things that would throw us off track. And of course there is always that “satisfaction factor” of being able to tick things off…

But how you use a to do list will determine the amount of success you actually generate AND how successful you feel.

Keep reading and you’ll see how to get more traction from your to do list.

You see despite the obvious benefits, the problem with most peoples’ to do lists are that they are generally a higgle-ti-pigglety heap of stuff that they need to get done.

These things could be big tasks that will take a few days, or small task that will take minutes – all jumbled into one. Some of the task are important and urgent, and some are unimportant and not particularly urgent… And whilst most folks are quite adept at weight these things in their heads when they make decisions about what order they should tackle things in, there is one things that is so blindingly obvious, we never even think about it.

The Blinding Truth That We Miss

The reality of most to do lists is that there is no inherent purpose or direction behind them.

Often we start from the point of what we need to “do” rather than the outcome we really want to achieve.

For instance, I’ve seen people break down projects into things they can stick on a to do list: set up a website, get business cards, order letterheads, buy envelopes, sign up for networking event etc…. The problem is, they get stuck in the website and business cards and never get round to the customers and delivery! And this happens on a smaller scale as well, on all the micro tasks that need to be done….

The way to avoid this is to start from another place.

So what does that mean?

Well in essence it’s the outcome. Start from the place of the outcome you want to achieve and then decide on the quickest way to get there… and those items will become the components of your to do list.

For example, say you need to increase your sales, or produce some training material or even prepare some work for a meeting next week. Whatever you have to do, there probably is more than one micro project… and it probably relates to something bigger – like “bringing in income”.

Getting clear on what this bigger picture is will SERIOUSLY free up your time, and your brain to achieve the things that really affect the end result.

The benefits of this are you will start to see short cuts you couldn’t have imagined before.

You start to achieve your real outcomes, rather than ticking off items on a list – which is immensely more satisfying.

As well as this you will step out of the “process” and into being able to really create things that are important.

So how do you go about doing this?

How to Max Your Results with Your To Do List

Well you work out what you really want out of all this activity. You step back and take a view. You decide why you’re doing everything you’re doing, and question if this is really going to get you to this end result.

So often when I start working with people, (talented and inspired people) it often turns out that the project they are working on is a “meantime stop-gap” to keep them in a holding pattern until they gather the confidence to go after what they actually want to create. So…

Step 1

Be truly honest with yourself about what you want. Even if it means that what you’re working on right now become obsolete. You can always figure out ways of tying up loose ends when you get a more accurate read on your direction.

As an example you may be messing about with trying to build a website, but what you really want are more clients. If you had more clients, you could pay someone to put together a website for you. So then you’d write down “more clients” as your category. You may have two or three of this bigger, less detailed outcomes. Think what rather than how for this step.

Step 2

Identify the obvious way to achieve that outcome. This is the most direct and obvious “how”.

In our example to “get more clients”, a quick and obvious way would be to get in touch with people you already know, and clients who you’ve already helped in the past.

Step 3

Put the direct and obvious “how” on your to do list.

The “contact past clients” is what then goes on your to do list, which I think you’ll agree is a hundred times more straight forward thing to achieve than setting up a whole website.

Now of course, this is just one example. And your life is way more complicated than this. In reality you should look to have your three of four big outcomes down on your to do list, and then under each of those respectively you put the smaller action items of the things you’re going to tackle

I even know people who have one outcome for each day of the week: like promote book on Monday, source leads Tuesday, talk to prospects on Wednesday, and so on, so that each outcome gets addressed at some point each week.

You may even want to put your to do list onto a sheet of paper with a number of columns for each category you’re going to tackle that day.

Can you see how all of a sudden your actions become more ordered and logical?

Can you also see how you’re going to bypass a whole heap of things you don’t necessarily need to get done… not to mention the time, energy and procrastination saved!

Not only that, but I expect you will notice feeling more purposeful and connected with what you’re doing, because you can immediately see how it’s going to get you to what you really want, rather than it being something long in the future, connected to another to do action down the line.

Try it just for one day and leave your results in the comments. I’d love to hear how you got on…

 

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