Decimate Your To-Do List

Our day to day lives keep getting more and more hectic and staying organized amidst the chaos becomes a bigger struggle every day as we strive to balance demanding jobs, family obligations and extracurricular activities. In the past I have been amazed at how some people manage to juggle it all with barely a hiccup in the flow of their day.

How do they do it?

What sorcery is this that allows these people to manage a schedule full of meetings and music lessons, household chores and volunteer duties?

How do they get anything done?

So I started to dig, and probe and unearth the mysteries that surround these strange beings who drift through life untouched by the grasping hands of forgotten obligations and the stress of an overflowing To-Do list. Surely this is witchcraft. But no.

What I found in my search was that the black arts rarely enter into it at all. More often than not it is simply some mundane trick or habit that the person has established to ensure they always have a handle on their schedule and an empty back burner.

Things like keeping a calendar. I know it’s hard but believe me you will thank yourself later if you just stick to putting things in your calendar. Use a web based calendar that you can access and update from anywhere at any time, and put everything in there. Meetings, parties, dentist appointments, anything that you need to schedule. Personally I also schedule blocks of time for doing my marketing or bookkeeping or professional development. But you have to stick with it. If you’re setting a date with someone on the phone you do not hang up until it’s in your calendar, if it’s via email do not RSVP ‘attending’ until it is in your calendar.

Also, always have paper and a pen with you. You never know when technology will fail you, and it will. Have a back up plan so that you can jot down a note or an appointment if necessary but DO NOT go to bed until that note or appointment has been moved to it’s permanent home (where ever that may be).

If you’re like me scheduling is the least of your worries. The real trouble is that massive and ever growing To-do list that often resides solely in the confines of your mind. First that To-do list needs a home. Put it somewhere you can refer back to easily and often. Then you need to start tackling it and checking things off. See below for some handy tips to help you decimate your to-do list.

However you decide to handle things remember consistency is key. The more you do something the more it becomes habit and once it becomes a habit you’re golden.