Conquering Your To-Do List: A Foundation for Time Management Success (#4)
This episode is available in blog format here.
What’s one of the most used tools in time management? The to-do list?
Question for you is: How effective is your to-do list? Do you have trouble sticking to it or knowing what on the big long list to focus on? If so what we are going to talk about today is for you.
SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
SHOW NOTES
[00:01:04] The Time Mastery System
[00:01:38] To-Do List Basics
[00:01:55] To-Do List Traps
[00:03:30] Three To-Do List Tips
[00:03:42] Tip 1: One To-Do List
[00:04:15] Tip 2: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List
[00:05:35] Tip 3: Find a System That Works for YOU!
[00:06:17] Your Action Items
[00:07:20] Free Mini Course - Escape Business Overwhelm: Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 Minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, business owners, welcome to another episode of the Time Mastery podcast where we reduce overwhelm. We help you learn how to reclaim ten plus hours of your business week and increase that revenue. I am Ryan Lloyd, a time management coach, and I have been a time management guru for 25 plus years. Here to help you.
What's one of the most used tools in time management? People would maybe say calendars. Some people would say to-do lists. We're going to talk about to-do lists today. So here's the question. How effective is your to-do list? Do you have trouble sticking to your to-do list? Does it overwhelm you when you think of your to-do list? A lot of times the way people use to-do lists, it's something where they're not going to stay consistent at it.
And there's a lot of issues with how we use the to-do list, but the to-do list can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal for time management as long as you use it correctly. A to-do list is part of what I call the Time Mastery System. There's six parts to the system. The to-do list is one of these parts.
We've already talked about vision, values and goals, which is the foundation of the system. The first part is planning. The second part is your calendar. And the third part is your to-do list. We've talked about those other three parts in previous episodes one, two and three. So go check those out if you haven't. You can find all those episodes at ryanlloyd.com/podcast.
Okay. So let's talk about your to-do list a little bit. Let's start with the basics. Your to-do list can be a piece of paper. It can be on an app. It can take a lot of different forms. But without a clear list it's easy to fall into a few traps. The first trap is just reacting to what feels urgent. Instead of working on what's important.
The other thing you can do is work on the things that are easy, and not work on the things that are actually going to move your business forward.
Another problem we can fall into with to-do list is just feeling overwhelmed just looking at it. A lot of times these to-do lists are really long.
We all have a ton going on in our lives, especially if you're running a business, especially if it's a side gig. You have your personal tasks that you need to do at home. Maybe you have some church things you need to do. There's all kinds of things that all of us need to do.
And so just getting overwhelmed can be one of the things that just makes you stop using your to-do lists.
The other trap you can fall into is procrastinating on key projects that will move your business forward because you're either getting overwhelmed, or you just don't know what things to focus on, and you choose to focus on the easier things or those smaller things. A well-crafted to-do list used correctly has the capability to give you structure, direction, and most importantly, peace of mind that you're working on the right things for your business.
So that's what we're going to talk about today.
And if you want a free mini course on how to implement this, and the best way to prioritize and use it to-do lists, I actually cover that in a free mini course called Escape Business Overwhelm: Plan Your Optimal Week in 15 minutes. It is a mini course that is 15 minutes long and will teach you exactly how to do this. It comes complete with PDF printouts that you can use and video modules. You can find that at ryanlloyd.com/freecourse.
Okay, so let's give you three really easy things you can do today to improve that to-do list that you have. The first thing is get your to-do list all in one place. If you have post-it notes or papers or different notes on your iPhone or things scattered everywhere, the first step that I always tell people is you need ONE to-do list that is all in a single place. That can be one note on your iPhone. It can be one piece of paper, it can be one whatever. But it all just needs to be in one place, not scattered around, because you need one source of truth for where you're going to go to try to figure out what your priorities are for the day.
The second thing that you have to do with a to-do list is you have to have a way to prioritize the to-do list. This combats that thing we talked about earlier with looking at a big long list, getting overwhelmed, having the emotions come into it and just then not doing anything with it. You have to have some way of prioritizing.
There's all different kinds of ways we could talk about this. The simplest way is each day the night before, go through your to-do list, read over everything and just put a simple asterisk or star next to three tasks that you're going to work on and focus on for tomorrow. Make sure these tasks are aligned with your business objectives and with your goals. They should actually be going to move the needle, these are the things that you want to focus on.
Use what's called the 80/20 rule. When we think about business or life. A lot of times there's 20% of the things we work on that get us 80% of the results. So a good question to ask yourself is which tasks are going to get me 80% of the results? Which 20% of the tasks? And in those 20% of the tasks, those are going to be the priorities that you want to focus on.
The third thing is to find a system that works for you. And if necessary, use technology to stay organized if that is what works for you. There are all kinds of apps you can use to manage to-do lists: Todoist, Trello, Asana, the list goes on and on. You can find digital tools that work for you, but sometimes it's just a list on paper.
My current strategy with my to-do list is I have a notebook and I have a to-do list for the month that I just keep adding to, and I cross tasks off as I go through them/ I star those tasks for priorities for the next day. That's my system. So it can be as simple as that.
So here's your action steps that you're going to take right now today. The first is: get one to-do list. Gather all the to-do list items you have from all the places you have them, and get them on a single list.
The second thing you're going to do is set your top three priorities for tomorrow. Highlight or mark with a star, an asterisk, whatever you want to do, circle them. But highlight or mark three tasks that are going to be your high value priorities for tomorrow.
And then third, try one new tool to keep track of your to-do list, whether that be a piece of paper, whether that be an app. Try a few tools for a week or a couple of weeks and see which ones you like and which ones work for you.
The key here is to find one that's sufficient for you, that you feel good using, and that you will stick with consistently. Consistency is key here. With any time management system, we want a system where we can set it up and we can use it over time, because doing things over time is what's going to get us results in our business.
And as I said before, I have a free mini course at ryanlloyd.com/freecourse. You can go checkout and download it totally free. There are video modules and downloadables that teach you how to plan your optimal business week in 15 minutes. So if you liked what you heard today, please go and download that.
And if you liked this episode of the Business Time Mastery Podcast, please subscribe, leave us a comment and let any other business owners know about this podcast and share it with them.
Remember, your to-do list is your map to success, so please use it wisely.
