The To-Do List and You
We have all done to-do lists. Somehow there never seems to be enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things on your list.
Making a “things to do list” is not enough. You have to rank them. You have to know which tasks are more important so you can focus on them. Then you have to allocate resources to those items, measure your progress, and reward yourself for your successes.
Assign a rank to them so you can focus on the important items. Use an A, B, C ranking. The A lists are the things to do today. B lists are things that need to get done, but not necessarily today. C lists are the things you need to find time to do soon.
Update the to-do list daily. Delete the things that you’ve completed, delegated, or downgraded, add the new things that had come up, rearrange the priorities to get the most important tasks on top, and assign estimated time to each. Then go down the list to decide what resources you have available to accomplish those tasks and draw a line. That should become your target for the next day.
Keep your to-do list exclusively for current activity, and maintain longer-term task and support materials as well as appointments where they belong—in a project support folder and your calendar, respectively.
Where you should keep your to-do list? Where it will do you the most good: a computer, tablet, loose-leaf binder and notebook are all examples.
