Creating a Functional To-Do List – TPW391

It can be challenging to keep track of everything that needs to get done. This week we look at ways to create a practical and realistic to-do list that works for you and helps you manage your busy life. How can we make our to-do list function well? This week we’re talking about creating a to-do list that works for us. I was inspired to think about this topic from a chapter in Laura Vanderkam’s book, The New Corner Office), which I listened to during a long drive last week.  A to-do list or task list is often one of the first things that come to mind when we think about productivity. In order to get stuff done, we have to do stuff. But most of us have a lot of things to do--lots of commitments we’ve made, lots of interests, lots of people who are important to us. Goals we’ve set, projects we’re working on at work and at home, dreams we hope to make come true someday. Different stages of life mean different--and sometimes competing--sets of commitments, priorities, goals, projects, and tasks.  That can make it a challenge to keep track of all the stuff that needs to get done. We need a system, and one of the fundamental building blocks of that system is a to-do or task list. But maintaining a perfect task list isn’t the goal. It’s a tool. Its purpose is to help us get the stuff done that’s important to us. The purpose of a to-do list * Capture things--so we don’t have to hold them in our head, which means we can relax, knowing things are preserved, and use our minds for more creative work and problem-solving. * Organize our tasks--when we have everything on our list, we can approach our tasks strategically. Can we batch any of them? Do we need to enlist the help or input of someone else for any of them, or assemble supplies? Does one or more of them need undisturbed focus time to complete, and if so, when will we carve that time out of the day? Why does our task list fail us? Because we’re listing projects rather than tasks. (we talked more about this in TWP130) Often when something stays on the list for a long time without completion it’s because we can’t identify how to do it--it’s too big, too time-consuming, too overwhelming. Consider whether it can be broken out into small steps. Here is an example from my recent workweek: I had a complicated document to draft, and it kept getting pushed aside for other tasks. So I broke it down into steps: * Spent 10 minutes searching our document management system for other similar documents; found a couple that were for similarly structured deals, governed by the same state’s law, that I could use as a starting point.  * Spent 20 minutes re-reading the deal terms and the other existing documents for the deal to make sure I understood what the parties’ goals were and how this new document would interplay with the existing ones. * Spent 30 minutes filling in the factual information that didn’t require creative thinking: party names, addresses, dates, dollar amounts (the easy stuff).  * At that point, it became easy to flow into doing the tougher analysis and drafting, because I’d built momentum. Because we’re creating a wish list rather than a to-do list (Vanderkam, The New Corner Office). They are aspirational, but a to-do list should be practical, listing only immediately actionable tasks. Aspirations, ideas, etc., should go somewhere else (David Allen’s “someday/maybe”...