How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn’t Actu...

How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn’t Actu...

tags: lifehacks

• “I feel resistance when starting work on something.”
  • Tiny chunk. Tell yourself you only have to do 5 minutes of work on it.
  • Just start. Once you get going, it’s much easier to keep going. So tell yourself that all you have to do is start. I like to compare this to my philosophy of running: instead of worrying about having to do the whole run, I tell myself that I just have to lace up my shoes and get out the door. After that, it’s really easy. Do the same thing with any task — just fire up your program, and do the first few actions (i.e. start typing). It gets easier after that point.
  • Reward yourself. Don’t let yourself check email (or whatever reward works for you — something that you need to do every day) until you do at least 10 minutes (or 15 or 20, it doesn’t matter) on the task. Set a timer. Once your 10 minutes is up, set another timer for 5 minutes and do email. Then repeat.
  • Try to find something exciting about it. Will it bring you revenue? What can you do with that revenue? Will it bring you new clients, new opportunities, new recognition?
• “I am terrified of certain tasks, or of working on certain projects.”
  • They are too intimidating in size or scope. To combat this, break it down into tinier chunks — actually, just the first tiny chunk
  • You don’t really know how to do it. If you haven’t done something a million times before, it is unfamiliar and unknown to you. And we are all terrified of that. The solution? First, get more information — learn as much as you can about it. That might require some research on the Internet, or talking to someone who’s done it before, or reading a book, or taking a class. Whatever you need to do, make the unknown become the known. Second, practice it as much as possible. Once you’ve learned how to do something, you need to practice it to become good at it. Don’t practice the whole thing — practice individual skills required to do a task or project, one at a time, until you’re good at those skills. Once you’ve mastered them, it will no longer be terrifying.
  • You are focusing on negative aspects. You might be focusing on how hard something is, or on all the obstacles. Try looking at the positive aspects instead. Focus on what a great opportunity this project represents … an opportunity to learn, to get better at something, to make more money, to work on a relationship, to gain some long-term recognition, to improve your advancement opportunities.
• “I start, but I get distracted and never finish.”
  • If you are getting distracted, it may be because you are working too long on a single task or project. To remain focused, do only a small task — you are more likely to stay on task. If the task takes a long time, focus on only doing 15-20 minutes of it.
  • Single-task. Don’t allow yourself to do multiple tasks at the same time. Just do the one task before you. If you tend to do email, IM, surf the web, read your RSS feeds, talk on the phone and all of that while doing a task, you will inevitably be distracted from a task. Do one task at a time. If you feel yourself being pulled from the task, stop yourself. And bring yourself back.
  • Unplug. The biggest distractions come from connectivity. Email, feeds, IM, Twitter, phones. Unplug from these connections while you’re working on your single task.
  • Clear your desk.
  • Focus. Pour your energies into the task, and see if you can get it done quickly. You might even get lost in it, and achieve that highly touted (deservedly so) state of mind known as “flow”.
  • Take breaks. It can help you to focus for a short amount of time on a single task, and use a time to help you focus, and then to take a break. This allows you to reboot your brain. Then, get back to work and focus on the next task.
• “I often don’t feel like doing any work at all. The idea of work seems horrible and I never start doing anything.”
  • Groom yourself. If you work from home, take a shower.
  • Take a walk. I find that a little walk can get my blood pumping, refresh my mind, and allow me to think about what I really want to do today. It might not be what you need, but it’s worth a shot.
  • Exercise. Similarly, exercise can make you feel great. A jog in the park, a short strength workout, some pilates, or meditation … these things get your mood up and get you feeling productive and happy. Try it out — you might feel more like doing stuff when you’re done.
  • Again, think of opportunities. Think about tomorrow — not tomorrow as in the distant future, but tomorrow as in the day after today. Imagine yourself looking back on today from tomorrow. Will you be glad you laid around? Or would you be happier if you did something, and took advantage of the opportunities in front of you today?
  • Baby steps. Don’t think in terms of having to tackle an entire work day, or an entire list of stuff to do. That’s overwhelming. Just think of doing one thing. That’s all you have to do — just that one thing. Make it something small and easy, and ideally something fun and rewarding. Focus on that easy task. Once you get started, you might be more willing to do another thing. Then another.
  • Commit thyself. If motivation is your problem, commit yourself to making some progress with a goal or project today, or every day this week
  • Rewards. Tell yourself that if you just do that first task, you’ll get a nice ice cream sundae. Or that you can buy a book, or DVD. Whatever your reward, use it to motivate yourself to just get started.
• “I make a list of things to do the next day.. and on that day, I wake up looking forward to a bad day, full of unpleasant tasks, I don’t feel like doing anything from the list.”
  • Overload. The most probable reason is that you’re overloading yourself.
  • Get into the habit of choosing only three Most Important Tasks to do for the day, and do them early in the day (at least two of them before email). If you only have three things to do, it’s not overwhelming. You’ll probably have some smaller things to do later, but write those down under a “batch process” heading, and do those small things all at once near the end of the day.

• I deal with the “I get distracted” part by creating a daily review of priorities. I list projects or goals that are important to me NOW, and that I want to be focusing on, or have in the front of my mind today. They could be things like stick to my diet, get exercise, make headway on X project, take time to really enjoy the day, and so forth. It helps me to phrase these things in positive affirmation statements that remind me why I have the goals, such as: "I’m going to spend a little time organizing the house today because my life will be so much easier when it’s all done." Then I read over my list in the morning while I’m having my coffee. It helps so much to remind me of my goals and priorities. From there, I usually plan two or three specific things to accomplish - a suggestion of Leo’s which I find extremely helpful because it makes me feel so good to cross them off my list.

• Some weeks I can be home for two days straight. I have found that getting ready for work just as if I was going out really helps me get into that work frame of mind.

• Don’t forget sleep! I find that when I don’t feel like doing any work at all, it is always because I am tired. Once I have had some sleep, I can easily accomplish the tasks that seemed too daunting to tackle before.

• I especially liked the part about getting excited about doing your tasks, I find that very helpful. Even if you have to do something very boring you can get excited about the feeling of accomplishment you will get afterward. Tackling an everyday task you despise can make you feel really good about yourself.

• I notice that when I’m procrastinating on a large or complex task, it’s usually a hint that I don’t know how to do it. Once I’ve recognized that fact, it’s much easier to get started.

• Getting the to-do list done is not guaranteed by writing the list itself - I agree. Here are some simple steps I use for this:

  1. The list should be short (up to 10 items. 5 is better).
  2. The list contains only high priority tasks.
  3. For every task you should know your outcome. What do you want to achieve with executing this task and what it means to you.
  4. Start with the first task. And don’t stop until you finish it.
  5. Move to the next task and do the same until the list is finished.
  6. Make the list for tomorrow.

• There’s a whole book about the feeling of “Resistance,” especially when it comes to things that are really important to you. It’s called “The War of Art.” If you just can’t bring yourself to do that big, creative project (and business is creative) this book is a real kick in the butt.

• I find that a timer is the best way for me to take on a bunch of tasks without feeling totally overwhelmed... Have to do a big pile of dishes? Timer is set for 15 minutes. When it goes off, I can walk away, or I can decide to just do a few more minutes of washing up and get the remaining dishes done.

• One of the things in GTD that resonated with me is the realization that there will always be more things on your to-do list than you can actually accomplish in a day. I now understand that I don’t have to eliminate my entire to-do list in one sitting; I need to make steady progress, every day, forever. I help myself feel productive by making sure my day starts with nixing two or three short, easy tasks, like “Clean 4 file folders out of the drawer” and “Send thank you email to xyz.” Once I’ve crossed off a few items, I’m on a roll.

• “I am terrified of certain tasks, or of working on certain projects.”Unfortunately I tend to get bogged down in the “Learn more…” step. I’d suggest rephrasing suggestion #2 as:"Learn just enough about it to get started." I’ve found it doesn’t usually take much research to get to the point where you can start breaking the project down, GTD-style, into small achievable actions.
  

• Get used to telling people No (diplomatically) - as in “I’m busy with something right now; can you come back in a half hour?” An interesting thing happened when I started saying No: People started to respect my time more. I think they learned I couldn’t do everything for them, and were more careful about what they tried to foist off on me.

• Don’t forget the power of ritual, especially when you consider that most of what we do in our lives is repetitive, ongoing stuff. Putting music on helps, too. This can be an important part of the ritual, or just useful on its own.When you compare the successful people with those who aren’t the big difference is that the true entrepreneurs have a ‘just do it’ mindset; they don’t stop when they feel this resistance ever. The right mindset can make a difference.

• I have always had an issue with to-do lists, as they felt like it was someone else telling me what to do, and I HATED that. What finally got me over the hump was starting to track my achievements with them.

  First, I tracked the amount of time — in minutes — that I spent doing non-distracted things. I defined them as things I had planned to do, or something that someone in authority had asked me to do. I aimed to reach 330 minutes per day, which took me about 3 months of weekly improvements. To help me do this I bought a vibrating countdown timer so that I didn’t have to remember to write down the time for each task. I would just set it to a small number of minutes, and if I was doing something else when it went off, I wouldn’t count any time towards my target, and I would have a gentle reminder to stop being distracted. The key for me was realizing that going for a daily goal was helpful.

  The second thing was understanding that there is more to being productive than not being distracted, so I started counting the number of my own tasks I completed every day. That has two effects. First I can’t count things that other people ask me to do, so there is an incentive to prioritize my own goals, the things that are most important to me. Second, there is an incentive to break things up into smaller chunks so that I can complete more in a day. The side effect of that second thing is that it is easier to do a small task than a large one, so it is easier to start it. I find that I have to have a number of items on my list to give me a choice. I also try to make them “next actions” in the style of GTD so that they can’t balloon in size or scope. But each action finished will likely allow me to add new ones to the list, so I continually have a choice.

• I’ve found that if my list says “Get taxes done” it will never happen. But if my list says “Find accountant’s phone number” then it’s not as hard to make the first step happen, and the rest follows suit.

• In a tangibly measurable way, judge the difficulty of a task before you begin, and again after you ... did it really turn out to be as difficult as predicted? Sometimes you may be surprised.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.