Managing Your Daily Tasks & To Do Lists Better

I’m in danger of turning this into some kind of personal development blog, and by the way, I don’t like the phrase “Personal development” at all. I also feel a bit of a fraud for even suggesting I can give other people advice on things, when I am patently failing to earn a decent income at the moment! However, I did work successfully for large companies, and for eight years I have run a business which paid me a great salary and benefits and employed a number of people, so although I’m currently getting it wrong, I have got it right for many years.

I also think that I would have loved to have had people’s best ideas when I was much younger, so I feel there may be a benefit in sharing the good parts with readers, and for that reason I’m going to add a new category to this blog, in which I’ll simply place my good ideas and learned experiences. But I don’t want to call it personal development, so I’m going to take a coffee break right now and see if I can have a Eureka moment and come up with a great name for this new category.

Got it! “Smart Tips!” Ok so I have a title and I can finally get around to what kicked me into writing this post:

“To do Lists” are the bane of every business person’s life. We all need some system to remind us to do certain tasks, and over the years I have tried them all. I’ve used a pad a paper, then I progressed to a Filofax, then I moved onto a PDA, and for the last couple of years I’ve used MS Outlook tasks, synchronized with my Blackberry.
The problem with each of these systems is that they never provide the complete solution, and there are always times when they aren’t suitable or even available when you need to record a task. As a result you still end up with pieces of paper, or notes written on the back of a business card. For example I can’t put a reminder in the BB when I’m driving, so I end up writing it on a pad or saving as a voice note.
The solution to this problem is simple – be sure that as soon as you can, you transfer the note / card / voice note onto your main to do list, which ideally should be organized in date order, so you can pre program tasks for the days you need to do them.

Nothing radical so far, is there? Well here comes the clever part, and trust me, this works. All you need to do is do this for 30 days and it will become habit and you’ll never stop.

Whatever method you use to record your tasks, every day, without fail, finish the day with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Go to your main task list / to do list or whatever you use, and write on the piece of paper the jobs you need to do the following day.

Now I need to pause hear to let the screams die down. “Paper!, Pen! That’s so twentieth century! I’ve been paperless for a decade!” And yes I know this, but as you will see, this really needs to be a paper and pen exercise if you are to follow all the steps – if you’re worried about image invest in one of those cool moleskine notebooks and a Mont Blanc pen! Want the links to their site? Try www.google.com
Where was I? Oh yes, so you’re sat with the notebook or paper and a pen, and looking at your Outlook tasks / scraps of paper / business cards with notes on them etc.
1/ Write all the tasks you need to do tomorrow in the notebook / pad / paper. Write them in any order, but get them all down. At this point you’ll probably remember a couple of things you forgot to write down – add them to the list.

2/ Prioritize them according to their importance - simply number them one to whatever. Only you can decide on their priority, but for me any tasks based on customers or income would be first, with personal stuff like “Wash car” lower down the order. And that’s it for the day! You will derive great benefit from having written the list at the end of the day. Your subconscious mind will be free to wander and explore and won’t be taken up with reminding your conscious mind every few minutes about the things you mustn’t forget the next day.

3/ It’s the next day! Now, when you have a gap when you’re not on the phone or in a meeting, turn to your list and start work on item number one. Avoid being interrupted “Can I get back to you in a few minutes please, I’m just working on something?” Work on that job until you have finished it. Once you have, strike a line through it. Next time you can go back to your list work on item 2 in exactly the same way.

Easy, isn’t it? Why does this work? It means you focus fully on each task to conclusion and it means even if you don’t clear all of your list (and that happens more often than any of us would wish), you at least have cleared the most important tasks. If you don’t prioritize, you’ll often end up doing all the tasks you enjoy, which aren’t necessarily the one which are important.

Finally, and this is the real strength of this method – you will have the satisfaction of physically crossing out a job when you have done it. This should not be underestimated as a great mental fillip – and if you’re making these crossings out several times a day it feels really, really good, and it will give you a mini mental boost. On those days where you complete all your tasks, you get to drive a huge diagonal line through the page, and that’s very satisfying. What happens if you don’t do all the tasks? Simple, they get added to the next day’s page, and once again you carry out your priority exercise, and maybe they will move up as deadlines approach, or maybe they will stay low priority.

So, this is Mike’s first Smart Tip – try it!