3 Ideas on how to not FAIL at writing todo lists

Most people confuse tasks with projects. What is the difference? A task is something that can be done in one sitting in a reasonable time. Answer Email, Call Mike, and so on.

A Project is made of differnt task. So a project is everything that needs more than on step to complete. Writing a book or creating a presentation.

I some instances the differnece is clear. For example, write an email. In some cases you can do this in one sitting, so its clearly a task. But in other instances its a project, for example if you need to do some research before writing it.

Project: Write email to boss

1. Call steve and ask him about last Quarters sales numbers.
2. Reseach Industy benchmark.
3. Write draft
4. Send draft to celleague for review
5. Send mail to boss

At that point its really clear what to do.

Action Step: Look at your Todo List. Are there any todos that are there for some time and you feel anxiety about?

Ask yourself, is it really a task or a small project made out of smaller task?

Ask yourself, what is the outcome I want to archive and what is the next physical action I have to do to move closer to the outcome?

Write this action step on your Todo list.

Most things do not matter. And not everything urgent has to be done.

1) Take your list and as a exercise cut half of the tasks.

How do you feel? Why did you cut those you did? Why have you kept those you did?

2) Of your list choose 3 task. How do you feel? Why did you choose those?

3) What if you could do only one thing? What would this one thing be?

Use those questions regulary to trim down your lists.

There are a ton of todo list apps out here. I tried most of them. At the end non of them will work. Why? Their strenght are their weakness. You can add hundreds of task and thats the problem.

Your goal should be to do less but with more impact. So beeing able to ad more does not help.

At the end some paper and a pecil is all you need. Maybe a paper notebook and a calendar. I noticed, if I am not able to manage myself with pen and paper, my life got to complicated.

Think about it: a few decades ago, all wars where managed with pen and paper (ok, with typewriters and paper, but you got the point). All companys where run the same.