To-Do List Overload?
Simple Ways to Declutter Your To-Do List
If you want to tighten up your task list and make it more inspiring and less overwhelming, find ways to reduce the number of tasks you have on your daily list.
While it’s important to be comfortable collecting everything that may or may not mean something to you, filtering what you collect and being vigilant about what goes into your task manager is equally important.
Often, we add emails to our task manager’s inbox that we think we need to reply to, yet we are avoiding deciding what an email requires of us.
You can prevent this by creating an “Action This Day” folder in your email app and moving any email you need to act on there (read, reply, research, etc.). You then only need one single, repeating task in your task manager to remind you to clear this folder each day.
If you regularly need to follow up with people—for example, if you are in sales—then create a spreadsheet to track your customers and prospects. You can keep far more information about your clients and prospects there, and you only need a single task in your task manager reminding you to review this as often as required.
For things like errands, group these. You can then create a single parent task that tells you to do daily chores. Then, when you do your daily planning, look at this list and decide which ones you could do the next day.
Too often, we add tasks we know we are not going to do to our task managers, hoping that perhaps we will do them one day. These tasks float around, creating a mess and, ultimately, a system that overwhelms you.
Your project folders or time sectors only holding pens for tasks you want to do sometime in the future. You do not want to be working from these spaces.
If you are doing your daily planning and are very strict about what gets into your system, the only list you need to be concerned with each day is your today’s list.
If you do not do a daily planning session, the fear of missing something will cause you to waste a lot of time going through your folders, ensuring you have done everything needed.
If you want to feel more in control, give yourself a little time to clean out your task manager of tasks you know you will not be doing. Ensure you are committed to the remaining tasks and start the week with purpose and focus. You’ll be surprised how much more you will get from your task manager.
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