3 Habits to Effectively Use To-Do Lists

Last month I talked about 5 ways to make to-do lists, and I hope that was great for giving you more ways to record what you need to do. Now here are 3 habits to help you get closer to completing those tricky tasks you never seem to have time for.

1. Habitually collate them

Being able to take notes on your phone, computer, notebook or whiteboard is great until you come to actioning those points. To-do list items with missing notes, duplicated across notetaking methods or entirely left at home can get frustrating when you finally get around to tackling them. Make a system at night before bed or first thing in the morning, whereby you can merge them to a ‘Master list’. Then you can keep one or two lists up to date rather than 20.

*Tip: If you use an app on your phone as your ‘Master list’, many app’s can sync across devices and be shared with others if you wanted a family or work to-do list.

2. Prioritise your ‘Master list’

This doesn’t have to be as comprehensive as organising the whole list, but if something is important, make it stand out!

- Put it at the top!

- Add a star to it*

- Make it bold

If it stands out, you are more likely to notice it first and spend less time figuring out what you should be doing next when you are ready to get stuff done!

*Tip: If you are struggling to figure out a priority for your to-do’s, use Prioritize me! A free app designed to force you to be honest about what you really think is worth your time.

3. If it’s important, schedule it in!

To turn a to-do list item into a task, you can schedule it in as an event in your calendar with a 3-day notification. This helps you figure out when you are going to have time to do it, reminds you to prepare for it and then sets a deadline!

*Tip: Don’t get carried away filling up your whole calendar with tasks! It might feel like you are going to be super productive, but life happens, plans change and everything always takes longer than you think it will. Just start with a couple of tasks and see how they go J

If you want to get a few things off your To-Do list but don’t have the time, click here to have a free chat with me and together we can work out what tasks you can outsource, guilt-free.

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