In the spirit of bringing you a single specific tip for your work and your career, today has got to be one of my favourites!
Let me ask a quick question: Do you keep a To-do list?
Maybe it’s on paper, in Notion, To-doist, or in some other app.
And chances are it’s pretty long and doesn’t get finished by the end of the day.
If you’re anything like me, that can drive you crazy, leave you frustrated or even feeling like you failed to accomplish what you set out to do at the start of the day.
That’s not the kind of energy you need on a daily basis, so here’s my approach to to-do lists:
Schedule everything.
When I say everything, I mean the things you really need to do, so you still have to take charge of prioritising your tasks, but then comes the fun stuff:
- Take the existing priorities and allocate time on your calendar to work on them. Make sure to be realistic about how much time a task (or subtask) will take.
- When the time comes for each task, work on it. If you cannot finish it, schedule an additional time slot to work on it.
- Every time a new task gets added to your list, don’t just write it down – block time in your calendar to work on it.
Rules:
- If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done
- If you can’t find time to work on the things you need to do, you have too many meetings. Get out of the biggest time-wasters and use those hours to get stuff done.
- Remove distractions so that you can really focus on the task at hand during every time slot.
Recommendations:
- Whenever possible, choose larger chunks of time to focus on a task for as long as possible, rather than doing 10 different things for 15 min each.
What do you think? I am confident that if you haven’t tried this approach before, you’ll find it’s a game changer.
Watch your to-do list go from unmanageable to a list of things to finally be tackled without feeling overwhelmed.
Have a great week!
Eva
P.S. Let me help you create more awesome moments in your work day. If you want to use October to finally get unstuck in your career and find the right steps forward, let’s jump on a discovery call to discuss how I can support you. Book your call here.