6 Tips To Be More Productive With Your To-Do Lists

AD affiliate links | To-do lists if done right can be a really great way to improve your productivity. A good list should help you get the tasks done you need to. It’s important to remember that to-do lists should not be something that make you feel guilty, or unproductive. They should be used to help aid you towards to being productive and getting tasks completed.

As someone who balances a lot of day to day tasks, lists keep me up to date with everything that I need to be on-top of. A good to-do list will keep you balanced and ready for a day of productivity. Anyway, let’s get started these are 6 Tips To Be More Productive With Your To-Do Lists.

1) Choose The Right Equipment (Pen & Paper Or An App)

Choosing where to create and keep your lists is really important. Some people find that they prefer to have digital to-do lists and some prefer to keep to physical to-do lists. You really need to pick an app or a surface that you love, so that you’re more inclined to continue using it.

If you go down the digital route, an app, word document or excel sheet could be perfect for you. Digital apps and documents have advantages over the classic pen and paper route. Such as being able to sort tasks by priority, due date, or alphabetically. You’ll be able to back the documents up too which is an added bonus. Trello and Asana are often good options for those who want to create digital to-do lists.

Why not check out 5 Ways to Journal Digitally and 40 Journaling Prompts To Focus On Positive Well-Being

2) Make Multiple Lists

Make lists for everything. Anything you do, make a list for it. This might sound excessive, but separating your lists will really help you.

Somethings you might want to make lists for to boost your productivity:

• Food shopping – I personally use the meal planner from Sighh Studio, and it has a tearaway list on it. So you can list your ingredients and meals in the same place. It’s so handy and perfect for university students.
• Household chores – I am the worst at keeping the house clean if I don’t have a list to keep up with household duties. This is something I particularly struggled with when I lived alone.
• Daily, weekly, monthly blog tasks – I know there will be some bloggers reading this post, I personally split my blog tasks into daily, weekly, and monthly blog tasks. There are some incredible blog planners out there, however I am currently using this digital blog planner.
• Odd Jobs – During lockdown I saw an influencer make a jar of ‘odd jobs’ that needed doing around her house, and garden and she would randomly pick one to do 1-3 times a week. This is a great way to get those jobs that need doing, but you aren’t to do done quickly.

3) Add Tasks As You Think Of Them

Sometimes you may be busy and stressed, and a task that you need to do will pop into your head. If you don’t write it down asap you might find that you forget it or don’t remember to do it immediately. When you think of a task you’re going to want to write it down immediately. Adding tasks when you think of them prevents you from dwelling on them.

If you use an app, you can immediately upload the task to your app. If you use a planner or journal, you can quickly write it down or make a note of it somewhere you won’t lose it.

4) Add Dates For Tasks

For the most part seeing a date next to a task will help you manage your time, and complete tasks in order of priority. There are some tasks that won’t need a date, but adding one to it will help you visualize a completion date for it. When you assign a date to your task you are helping yourself effectively plan out your week, which is an excellent time-management strategy.

When you create your lists digitally you’ll be able to amend the times and dates for your tasks which might be really helpful if you have a busy lifestyle. There are many perks to amending your lists. If you have too many tasks scheduled for the day and you know you won’t get to them all, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Journaling digitally gives you the means to change up your schedule if you over plan, life changes, or your tasks change.

5) Limit Yourself To A Maximum Of 5 Tasks Per Day

5 tasks doesn’t sound like a lot but there’s a logic to limiting yourself to a maximum of 5 tasks per day. The less tasks you give yourself, the more likely you are to complete them. If you write 10-20 tasks per day you might find yourself getting overwhelmed. This may be too many tasks for you, and you may find it hard to to concentrate on those tasks. You will then have to move those tasks to another day which means re-prioritising and changing your list, which is unnecessary work that causes stress and can feel defeating.

Some great advice I recently read was focus on your intention for the day. That’s what you should write down when you create your daily tasks. Over a series of weeks and months you can track how you manage your tasks, and use that to create a list of tasks that best suit you. This might be more or less than 5 tasks, but I’d use 5 as a starting point.

Keep Your Tasks And Goals Seperate

Whether you create your lists with pen and paper or digitally you’re going to want to put down what matters. Every task that goes on your list or lists matters. You need to learn to objectively create your lists with tasks, and not with goals. Excuse the pun but the goal is to be to intentional.

Goals tend to be bigger achievements, and can’t be put on a list and completed with one task. For example ‘creating a new blog’ would be a goal and not a task. Tasks are the actions you take to reach an objective. Break an objective down and you have your tasks. Very often they’re single events, for example the tasks for ‘creating a new blog’ might be:

• Create a new WordPress account
• Set up a domain name
• Buy hosting
• Purchase or find a relevant WordPress theme.

Ideally tasks you get done each day will be in pursuit of a bigger goal. You should write your goals and objectives somewhere else. It can be in your to-do list app or notebook, but not on the list that you look at each daily or weekly. You’re going to want to keep the separately. It is important to check in on your goals but you don’t need to do this all the time. You just want to keep them so you know what your tasks are for.

Having the right list will really help you achieve the tasks you want to get done, and help you work towards your goals. Let me know in the comments what your daily or weekly list looks like!

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