How To Write Your To-Do List | PRODUCTIVITY TIP.

hello and welcome to another episode of my productivity Mastery series and today we're going to look at how to write your tasks now I've covered this multiple times before but I think I've got a better way of explaining it that might just help you to save time when it comes to deciding what to do and this really has everything to do with one of the reasons why we procrastinate now let me just give you a little bit of an example outside of the task manager the first thing is when writing a shopping list now it's something that I do every week it's something that I use apple reminders for simply because I can add stuff to my shopping list using Siri fantastic way to do it but when I'm writing a shopping list I'm not going to write things like food drink toiletries you know that would not help me in the supermarket it is far too General it's what I would describe as a statement it's not a task or a list it's just food drink toiletries it doesn't help me when I'm in the supermarket instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to be a lot more descriptive I'm going to write things like broccoli chicken breast carrots Sprouts mushrooms almonds balsamic vinegar or balsamic vinegar or balsamic vinegar I don't know how to pronounce that cauliflower or Louis LaTour Poulet fuse which is an outstanding wine if anyone out there is looking for a good white wine but that's much more descript descriptive now the thing is I know this order is broccoli chicken breast carrot sprouts mushrooms Etc what you would actually do is you would then group them together so I would have all my fruit and vegetables all in one group any meat that I'm buying would be another group and Dry Goods in another Etc that just makes it much easier when I'm in the supermarket now most people know this but why are we not doing that with our task managers now before I go into details about that I have a brief message from this week's sponsor this video is sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community where Millions come together to take the next step in their creative Journey with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography productivity freelancing and more skillshare has classes to fit your schedule and skill level and members get unlimited access to thousands of inspiring classes with Hands-On projects and feedback from a community of Millions for example this course on essentialism by Greg McEwen is fantastic it has helped me to identify what is important to me so I can focus my time and energy on the essential things in my life if you're looking for the the perfect place to ignite your creativity and learning then give skillshare a try the first 1 000 people to use the link or my code carlpaulin will get a one month free trial of skillshare so you can start exploring your creativity today okay thank you so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video you know I've been using skillshare for a very long time I even have some of my own courses on skillshare it's a fantastic platform if you want to learn and I highly recommend that you check it out okay let's move on into how to take what we know about shopping lists into our task managers now a lot of the time when I'm working with clients is I actually see a lot of task managers that have tasks like increased sales improve Factory safety um higher HR manager and remodel meeting rooms and summer activities for the kids now the thing is these are not tasks these are just statements of intent if you like but they're certainly not tasks they don't help you now what you want to be thinking when you're creating a task list or adding stuff to your task manager you need to be thinking about your future self what is it that you're gonna need to know that's going to prevent you from procrastinating you know if I come to my task manager and I see something like increase sales I'm not gonna do it because I I don't know what to do that's actually just a statement it's saying okay you need to increase sales right okay how am I gonna do that what can I do in this moment that's going to help me to increase sales that's gonna some that needs some thinking time that needs breaking down improve Factory safety is another one it's not a task it is a statement what do you need to do at a task level that will increase Factory safety or improve Factory safety now I don't manage a factory I'm not entirely sure of this but I have spoken to people who do manage factories and one of the things that they need to do is to make sure that Protocols are in place and that all new stuff are trained in the safety protocols so that might be something that needs delegating to your your HR department or your training department or if you're a sole Trader like myself perhaps you have to start thinking about how can I train my employees but these tasks do not help you because when you see something like that I can guarantee right now that you're going to procrastinate and you're not going to do them so what we mostly generally do is is we will then just offshoot it to another day thinking oh we'll look at it another day that other day comes and you repeat the same process because they're not tasks they're just statements so how do we break those kind of tasks down things like increased sales improve Factory safety hire HR manager well what we can do is we're only looking at the very next step I don't like to go beyond the very next step because too many things are likely to change and quite often when I'm kind of planning out thinking of this step and then that step and then this step and then that step sometimes those steps don't need doing other times I need to add in an additional step so actually what I'm more concerned about is what is the very next step I don't need to worry about the second or third or fourth step because that's going to naturally come from Once deciding what that next step is so let's say we take increased sales what we could deal is say a range meeting with sales team to discuss idea is for improving sales so the task there is a range as meeting with your sales team now that's something that I can do is that's a task that's not a statement that is a task that probably means all I have to do is send out an email to my sales team one about improve Factory safety well do a walk around of factory with supervisor to review safety protocols now that might not be something that I need to do I can do in one day obviously depends on how big the factory is but what we could do is we say right this week I'm going to call it safety week and every day we're going to look at a different part of the factory to see where we can improve safety now that's a task organize days to spend with the supervisor on that's not going to be a day you probably spend an hour each day going around a different department looking at safety protocols and then working with the supervisor so that we can discuss what's the best way forward that's mainly something that I would put in my calendar one about hiring a HR manager well perhaps the first step here is to write a job description for the new HR manager because without the job description you know you're not got anything to post to a job advertising site you're not going to be able to look up or hire somebody through Linkedin or whichever way that you hire people so with something like that what's the very next step well the next step is well let's write out a job description what do I want an HR Manager to do and what about something like I mean I've dealt with there with well let's also look at another one remodel meeting rooms which is another one of those statements again that would just simply be setting up a meeting with the interior designer to discuss meeting rooms so that's probably what an email a phone call a text message depends on your relationship with the interior designer now if you'd never use an interior designer before perhaps you now need to go online and Research into local interior designers that would be the next step and perhaps while you're there they will have a website and you can just reach out to them through their website you've done two tasks in one hence the reason why I don't like to forward plan tasks because quite often a lot of the tasks that I think I need to do I don't need to do and finally summer activity for the kids something from your personal life well what involved there now that could something be researchable possible activities research possible activities for the kids again not something that you may want to do in the evening you could probably do it from your phone while sat on the sofa but summer activities for kids is a statement it's not a task what you're looking for is the actual task and that simply could be research activities to do with the kids in the summer or it could be discussed with my partner what activities we'd like to do with the kids this summer so I really want to kind of stress this point because I've been coaching people now for like four or five years and it's one of the biggest things and the biggest problems I see inside when people are trying to get organized they're starting at the right place they're beginning to use a task manager they're getting stuff into the task manager but the stuff they're putting in there is actually causing the problem they're not or you're not writing out tasks in a way that people will be able to or you will hit your future self will say exactly that's what I need to do right now and the great thing about being more specific about the task is you're in a much better place to be able to anticipate how long something will take you know improve sales I have no idea how long that would take simulate summer activities for kids or remodel meeting rooms I mean I have no idea how long that will take but if I break it down like set up meeting with interior designer to discuss meeting rooms now I know that's a two-minute task or perhaps five minutes if I have a talkative interior designer um but I know once I've broken the task down how long something will take and so whenever anyone says to me that how do you know how long something will take that's an indication that the way they're writing the tasks is actually not making it clear you know if you look at that main list that I had at the beginning for example arranged meeting with sales team to discuss ideas for increasing sales arrange meeting it's an email it's probably 30 seconds to a minute maybe five minutes at the most you know uh write do a walk around with the factory supervisor to review safety protocols okay that might take an hour that might be 45 minutes but I'm pretty clear how long it's going to take write job description for new HR manager okay that could be 20 minutes maybe 30 minutes set up meeting with interior designer we discussed it to five minutes and research possible activities for kids well maybe that depends on me how much time am I going to do that and let's say I'm going to give it an hour now I know but the list before I had no idea that just looks overwhelming even though there's only five tasks on it so hopefully now hopefully I've managed to get expressed how you should be writing tasks and why it's actually so important that you get your tasks written in such a way that it stops you from procrastinating and gives you Clarity on how long it's going to take you well thank you so much for watching this video and thank you to skillshare for sponsoring the video and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week hello thank you very much for watching my videos now I have something exciting to tell you about recently I have developed a brand new time management system it's a system designed to manage your time in the 21st century the world has changed a lot over the last 20 years in fact it's actually changed a lot this year and what we need now is a system a time management system that is very easy to use Easy to maintain so that you can spend more of your time doing the work and that's what the time sector system is all about it's going to change your whole belief system about way the way a time management system should work because this focuses on when when you are going to do the task and let's be honest it doesn't matter how motivated inspired or how urgent something is if you don't have time to do it it is never going to get done and that's what this system is built around getting your work done so you can spend more of your time doing the things that you want to do I hope you join me in this course the full details of the course are in the show notes below so please join me and thank you very much for watching this brief video

Channel: Carl Pullein

Views: 12,688

Keywords: time management, how to be productive, productivity tips, how to be more productive at work, to do list, to do, how to maximize productivity in the workplace, increase productivity, Carl pullein Time management

Id: H6otOl9wCa8

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023