My adamant approach to all things we do \u2013 whether organizing, managing time, cleaning, or working on our goals \u2013 is to find our own, individual way.\u00a0 There is no one right way to do anything.\u00a0 Take what works from each approach and combine it into something that works for you, even using any of your own unique ideas no one\u2019s ever mentioned.\u00a0 And no matter how good or logical something sounds \u2013 follow your own needs.\u00a0 Additionally change or adapt it when it makes sense.\u00a0 When it comes to to-do lists, it can be completely personalized, where only you matter.<\/p>\n
Recently I talked about my to-do program on my iPad<\/a> \u2013 Appigo\u2019s Todo. Yet, as much as I use it and wouldn\u2019t give it up, it\u2019s only part of how I handle my to-dos.\u00a0 I do rely on it and is the place where I try to capture all the tasks I need to do \u2013 eventually. This is often called a \u201cbrain dump\u201d where you get all your tasks \u2013 regardless of priority, relevance, timeline, limitations, and etcetera \u2013 out of your head.\u00a0 It\u2019s not important how you capture them outside your head as long as they\u2019re saved somewhere besides your brain.\u00a0 This is one of the important aspects my technology to-do list serves for me.<\/p>\n This complete collection of all your to-dos can be utterly overwhelming.\u00a0 I\u2019ll confess that quite often looking at my whole to-do list can paralyze me.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t recognize what needs to be done or that many items are for the future \u2013 it\u2019s just that there\u2019s so many \u2013 ugh.\u00a0 A pro for a digital collection of your tasks is that it stays neat and never requires you to rewrite it since you can move, rearrange, and modify any and all tasks easily.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty confident that I am saving significant time simply by not rewriting and reorganizing my lists!<\/p>\n For exactly this reason as well as some other reasons, I sit down once a week with this master to-do list, my calendar, and my ARC notebook<\/a>. \u00a0I review most of the tasks on my list considering the time and energy I\u2019ll likely have to dedicate to working on these items.\u00a0 Then I date the page in my ARC notebook, \u201cJune 3-9, 2013\u201d and proceed to list typically 7-14 tasks, the goals of what I want to accomplish during that week.\u00a0 The process of writing them down serves me in a couple of way \u2013 it forces me to be mindful of how many tasks I\u2019ve set out to do since I find that just a digital list can too easily grow unrealistically.\u00a0 Also, writing them down seems to help my memory of them without the list in front of me \u2013 there\u2019s research that supports the process of writing connects our brains with it more than just reading it.<\/p>\n A couple of notes:<\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 generally I recommend not setting more than 3 goals\/tasks per day as a common struggle is to overestimate how much we can do which can then lead us to feeling unsuccessful and more overwhelmed though of course varies according to your own life<\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 some people find it helpful to add their tasks directly into their calendar which is great if it works (my inner child rebels against that vehemently! lol)<\/p>\n Even with this process, it doesn\u2019t mean that I don\u2019t look at my master to-do list during the week.\u00a0 First, my master list has regular daily or weekly tasks that aren\u2019t included on my weekly handwritten to-dos.\u00a0 Second, as much as we might try to plan our weeks (or days) things can arise that require we adapt or change our focus.<\/p>\n This is when I find the digital to-do list additionally helpful.\u00a0 Most (maybe all?) digital to-do programs come with multiple features for organizing your to-dos.\u00a0 How you set those up and how you use them is quite personal.\u00a0 I\u2019ve designated areas or \u201croles\u201d of my life (which I talked some about in, Tasks \u2013 Big Picture View<\/a>): Routines (this is new for me), Business, Household, Health, Personal, Volunteering.\u00a0 Ideally I spend some time each week in each of these areas and if I need to shift my goals for the week, I can consider if I want to focus on a particular area and use the program to only look at those tasks. \u00a0I have some tasks set with an alarm, which helps make sure they\u2019re dealt with.<\/p>\n Another way the digital to-do list helps me is that I set up contexts (only 1 per task) and tags (no limit per task), both of which I can sort with and see only those tasks that relate to what I\u2019ve specified.\u00a0 There are times when I put off certain types of tasks and then find myself motivated to tackle them.\u00a0 Let me give you an example \u2013 what I consider \u201ctechnical\u201d phone calls are disturbingly problematic, those phone calls where<\/p>\n Chances are that only those types of phone calls are even on my master to-do list and by setting the context as \u201c@Phone calls\u201d I can pull all them up regardless of what category they fit into and burn through them when I have the time and feel up to it.\u00a0 Similarly one way I use tags is for identifying types of tasks that match my current capabilities \u2013 my physical and mental state like I talked about in Your Tasks have Needs<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve combined my to-do list into using both technology and more traditional methods.\u00a0 Some might find my way to be slightly redundant.\u00a0 Yet it\u2019s my way, not anyone else\u2019s \u2013 it\u2019s been changed and modified over the years according to what does and doesn\u2019t work as well as working through how to make it more successful.\u00a0 I doubt I will ever be done tweaking it \u2013 like the written list that sometimes has a specific day written by the tasks and sometimes time estimates while most of the time it\u2019s just the task.\u00a0 It\u2019s most important that you find ways that work for you \u2013 a system for handling your tasks that supports you in making progress through them \u2013 whatever that ends up looking like for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With so many to-do list options it\u2019s hard to find the specific approach that works for you \u2013 as an individual. Adapt the tools that work for you \u2013 to make things easier and help support you in progressing through the lists of what you need to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,11],"tags":[10,8,18,5,9,7,22,15,4],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-timemanagement","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-procrastination","tag-productivity","tag-resources","tag-routines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-o7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n