Do you often feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do, or do you find yourself missing deadlines? Or do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?
All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper to-do list. These are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.
By keeping such a list, you make sure that your tasks are written down all in one place so you don’t forget anything important. And by prioritizing tasks, you plan the order in which you’ll do them, so that you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can leave until later.
To-do lists are essential if you’re going to beat work overload. When you don’t use them effectively, you’ll appear unfocused and unreliable to the people around you. When you do use them effectively, you’ll be much better organized, and you’ll be much more reliable. You’ll experience less stress, safe in the knowledge that you haven’t forgotten anything important. More than this, if you prioritize intelligently, you’ll focus your time and energy on high value activities, which will mean that you’re more productive, and more valuable to your team.
Keeping a properly structured and thought-out list sounds simple enough. But it can be surprising how many people fail to use them at all, never mind use them effectively. In fact, it’s often when people start to use them effectively and sensibly that they make their first personal productivity breakthroughs, and start making a success of their careers.
Preparing a to-do list
Step 1: Write down all of the tasks that you need to complete. If they’re large tasks, break out the first action step, and write this down with the larger task. (Ideally, tasks or action steps should take no longer than 1-2 hours to complete.)
Step 2: Run through these tasks allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent).
If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.
Using your to-do list
To use your list, simply work your way through it in order, dealing with the A priority tasks first, then the Bs, then the Cs, and so on. As you complete tasks, tick them off or strike them through.
Many people find it helpful to spend, say, 10 minutes at the end of the day, organizing tasks on their list for the next day.
Examples
To-do lists can help you get, and stay, on top of important projects and piles of tasks or decisions.
For instance, imagine you’re heading a team that’s working on a project. There are so many tasks to do, and so many people doing them, that staying on top of it all seems overwhelming.
In this situation, structure your list by team member, writing out tasks and deadlines for every person on the project. Each day as you write out your own tasks that need completion, you can also check your team to-do list to see who’s working on what, and if anything is due in that day. You can also include other tasks that you need to complete as part of your job.
Or, imagine you’re in a sales role and have a long list of people who you need to talk to. You write out a list of everyone you need to call and every client you need to see, and start prioritizing.
Key points
To be well organized in the workplace, you need to be using to-do lists. By using them, you will ensure that:
Mark the importance of the task next to it, with a priority from A (very important) to F (unimportant). Redraft the list into this order of importance. Then carry out the jobs at the top of the list first. These are the most important, most beneficial tasks to complete.
A longer version of this article first appeared at MindTools.
