How to Master Your To-Do List in 5 Simple Steps

this is how my daily schedule and to-do list usually looks like at the beginning of a day poorly packed with to-do's meetings and reminders and this is how my to-do list and level of accomplishment for that day looks like in the evening completely empty to-do list with a 100 goal achievement at Superior Quality a lot of people would imagine this high level performance and consistency requires a lot of effort planning and discipline but in fact it's really just about setting a proper system once that you can repeat every day and in this video we are going to break down the five-step system of my daily task completion routine that I've perfected over the last few years and that will surely work for you too step number one is nothing new but unfortunately I see very few colleagues or clients doing this it's all about setting clear goals for their day and with clear goals I do not mean something like be efficient today get a lot of things done or maybe achieve all my to-do's no because that's way too unspecific clear goals should be unambiguous and very specific as well as challenging but at the same time achievable some would say that you should set yourself so-called stretch goals which are goals that might be slightly over your current capabilities or responsibilities but just enough so that you can still achieve them by putting enough effort into them having clear goals will help you stay focused for that day because they act like your North Star that will guide you through the remaining four steps of the task completion framework that's why setting the right goals is crucial at the very beginning of your day your overarching goal or each of your goals should always be so specific that they have a clear outcome attached to them for example example your goal could be to finish the proposal for client XY set or another goal could be to come up with a first draft of the quarterly Board of management report I mean in reality in most cases however you will not only find yourself having just one goal for the day but rather two or more and there's no problem at all if this is aligned with your weekly plan and schedule that you should have in the back of your mind and be considered when moving to step two prioritizing setting the right priorities is key to achieve whatever you have said to be your goal for that day so let's stick with the example where you have two goals one to finish the proposal and the other one is to draft the quarterly bom report the first thing to ask yourself if it's not yet answered by your weekly plan is which of the two is more important the proposal or the report importance can be defined in different ways but you should be thinking about which of the two goals is more urgent and has a higher impact most likely you will find an answer quite quickly looking at those two Dimensions if the answer to those question is not yet clear you might want to draw a simple two by two Matrix with urgency on one axis and impact on the other axis now rank your goals and you will have an answer to what you need to prioritize that day the one goal that is most important and urgent but you might wonder what if one is more important and one is more urgent or if both are similarly important and Urgent well in that case you either need to rethink your goals actual importance and urgency or you need to drill down one level and look at your goals underlying tasks to finish the proposal you might need to align with a colleague from it to clarify some open questions read you comments from your boss include the commercials and include the remaining commentary on the project system sustainability for the bom report you might need to extract the financials from the internal Reporting System analyze them visualize them in a PowerPoint presentation include commentary in the presentation and request the latest project updates from respective project leads if both overarching goals are similarly important and in case it's rather unrealistic to accomplish all their tasks on that day you need to prioritize them such that you know which other ones you put on your to-do list for the day and this might sound way more complex than it actually is in reality I usually know the goals of my week since I am also doing a weekly planning exercise then for each goal I naturally list all the tasks I need to accomplish to achieve that goal and when listing the tasks I already consider urgency and importance and rank them like so that's why I highly recommend not only thinking about what you want or need to achieve but also how you get there and which steps you need to take this can be done using different productivity or note-taking tools but my workflow is quite simple and almost the same for personal and professional use I have my goals as well as the respective subtasks in todoist my rough weekly calendar with already scheduled meetings in Outlook and then I plan my remaining subtasks from to-do lists around those already scheduled meetings in Outlook todoist is a simple but great tool that lets you set deadlines depending on the task's urgency as well as priorities depending on the tasks impact having set your goals and to-do's you can view them in a calendar view just once you today and you can sort them amongst others by deadline or priority by the way don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you found this video helpful so far and consider signing up for my free newsletter by the link in the video description below now once you're clear about your tasks for the day that you have listed in your to-do list it's time to actually plan your day with a system called time boxing this step is super important to ensure you get everything done that you have scheduled for that day in our example we ended up with prioritizing a total of five to-do's with our two overarching goals in reality however your day might not be completely empty so you could just start working on the most important to do rather your day would look like this more or less scattered with some regular appointments such as team or Project true fixes or already scheduled project calls so you need to intelligently plan the completion of your tasks around those already existing meetings and there are three common methods to do this first you could simply schedule your to-do's based on importance this means you would start to work on your most important to do in your first free slot in the morning and then complete all the other tasks in descending order of importance but you could also plan your tasks based on the time slots you have available and the time expected that it requires to complete a task for example if you have a one hour slot in the morning between two existing meetings you could think about which of your tasks can or should be completed in that hour and plan it for that slot alternatively you could think about the nature of your to-do's if they are rather creative work or just required to complete a pretty straightforward task personally I know from experience that I can better work on Creative tasks in the afternoon and evening while I'm a lot more efficient in completing rather specific straightforward tasks in the morning so I would plan them accordingly but to be honest most of the time I follow a combination of the three methods and take a quick look at my calendar to then plan out my tasks taking all the three aspects importance available time and nature of the task into consideration what is crucial about the last step is that you not only need to plan out your day but ideally you also block your calendar accordingly thereby you set boundaries and time slots for yourself but also ensure that colleagues do not just randomly schedule less important meetings that day to not only start with a great plan for the day but also be able to maintain that speed and efficiency that you have set yourself to follow it's crucial to focus throughout the day in particular if you have set yourself some stretch goals for the day or if you realize in the morning that one or the other task is a lot more complex than you expected it to be you need to double down a very simple approach that enables you to do so it will eliminate distractions distractions could be anything from a phone call A team's message an email notification your dog barking or someone ringing the doorbell every time a distraction be it in digital form or in real life reach assumed you would be torn out of your workflow and line of thought then you have to deal with the distraction and get victory of workflow which takes time mental effort and finally leads to lower levels of productivity so an easy way to eliminate all those distractions is to block or disable all your digital notifications maybe even close down your email program or your messenger program or communicate to your colleagues that you're not available to chat for a certain period of time now let's come to the final step of my get things done framework without which the whole approach would only be half as good so whatever you try to achieve or do in a given week day or time blocker you always need to prepare to react to unforeseen events even if it seems as if we are planning out everything to the minute at the very core you need to be flexible and able to adapt at any point in time let's assume you have nicely planned out your day to ensure you will be able to complete your tasks of the day and achieve your daily and weekly goals what if a super important and Urgent request from your manager or a senior executive reaches you that day that would clearly be the most important task for you to complete and downgrade all the other tasks that you had nicely set out for the day so you either need to squeeze that request in your day and be even more efficient when completing the other tasks you need to de-prioritize some of your tasks and move them maybe to the next day or you might have accounted for some buffer time in between your day from the very beginning in any case you need to know that flexibility is key and a major soft skill that is partially given but can also be learned and improved over time because being flexible enough to adapt to new circumstances does not only help you to perform better at work or in your personal project but also gives you the peace of mind that you will be fine even if your schedule will be redundant only halfway through a day we our project as I mentioned it's crucial to blend and blob your time for your prioritized tasks this is not just about a single meeting schedule but about taking a lot more control over your calendar and precious time so watch this video next where I show you how this can be done with just a few simple but rarely known Outlook calendar tips

Channel: Lea David

Views: 17,577

Keywords: to do list, time management, productivity, get things done, gtd, todoist, todoist gtd, task completion, task completion framework, productivity tips, productivity tips at work, be productive, become more productive, how to get everything done

Id: 0ed4QQh7C3k

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2023