Of all the things you can do to manage your time, making a daily to-do list is one of the simplest.
You pull out a sheet of paper (or open a document on your computer). You make a list of the things you need to get done that day. And then…well, that’s about it.
Yep, it’s easy to make a daily to-do list.
It’s also easy to do it wrong.
Or maybe “wrong” isn’t the right word. But the way you go about making your daily to-do list (from when you make it to what you put on it) can affect how much you actually get done.
If you want to make an effective to-do list for the day, here are three things to keep in mind.
Tip #1: Make Your Daily To-Do List the Night Before
When you make your to-do list for the day on that actual day, you’re giving yourself one more thing to worry about.
So first you have to spend precious time making your to-do list. And, as you make your list, you get to think about all of the things you have to do today. And how you’ll never get everything done before bedtime. And how you’d really like to crawl into bed and go back to sleep…
The day hasn’t even started, and you already feel overwhelmed.
When you make your to-do list the night before, you have some distance. Even if you know you have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow, that’s tomorrow. Somehow, a busy day doesn’t feel as overwhelming when it’s still a day away.
Since you won’t be feeling frantic and frazzled, you’ll have a clearer head as you make your daily list. You’ll be able to focus on what really needs to get done. And you’ll be more realistic about how much you can reasonably expect to do given the other things you know you’ll have on your plate the next day.
Plus there’s just something different about waking up in the morning with your to-do list already made. You don’t have to scramble to figure out what you’ll be doing today because you’ll already know. And, somehow, that will make you feel like you’re ahead of the game instead of struggling to catch up.
Tip #2: Keep Your Daily To-Do List Short
How many tasks are on your to-do list for the day? Ten? Twenty? More?
No wonder you have trouble getting everything on your list done. And a list full of empty checkboxes can be pretty de-motivating.
So try to limit your daily list to 5 tasks or less (not including your daily routines). And you should be reasonably sure that you can get all of those tasks done by the end of the day.
Now you’ll do other things throughout the day. But these are the tasks you’ll truly commit to getting done.
Checking all of those tasks off of your to-do list will feel great. And anything else you get done will be gravy.
So, right now, pick a limit for your daily to-do lists. And if you’ve already made your to-do list for today, start a new one that only has three to five to-dos on it.(Including anything you’ve already gotten done.)
Now, give your new, shorter to-do list a test drive.
Even with a shorter daily list, there will be days when you don’t get everything done. But if this happens more than once every week or too, adjust your daily lists.
There are two ways you can do this:
- Choose smaller tasks. (Things you can do in an hour, or even just thirty minutes.)
- Decrease the number of tasks on your list. So if you usually put five tasks on your daily list, see what happens if you go down to three tasks.
Tip #3: Schedule Some of Your Daily To-Dos
If you’re like many of us, this is how you work your daily to-do list.
- You look over your list.
- You pick the task that appeals to you most in that moment.
- You do that task.
- Lather, rinse and repeat.
There’s nothing wrong with this method. It works. Sometimes.
However, if there’s a task on your list that you really don’t want to do, there’s a good chance it won’t get done. Instead, you’ll just keep passing it over for less unpleasant tasks. And that dreaded task will keep getting moved from one daily list to the next.
One way to make sure a task on your list gets done is to schedule a specific time to do it.
So, in the morning, look at your to-do list. Are there any tasks you can schedule for a specific time that day? Then do it. And set an alarm to go off at that time.
Once you set a specific time for a task, you can forget about it until it’s actually time to do it. In a strange way, this makes the daily list feel even shorter. You might not have done that task yet, but you know you’ll get to it. You don’t even have to remember to do that task because you set an alarm to remind you.
Since you don’t have to worry about tasks you’ve scheduled, you’ll have more mental energy to focus on the other tasks on your list.
Any daily to-do list is better than no daily to-do list. But if there are things you can do to make your daily list an even more effective time management tool, why not?
And, with these three tips, you can create a to-do list that will help you have a more productive day.
Do you make a daily to-do list? If so, do you have any tips for making a to-do list more effective?
