Example of to do list

To-Do Lists - Time Management Training from MindTools.com

Do you often feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you find yourself missing deadlines? Or do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?

All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper "To-Do List." These are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.

By keeping such a list, you make sure that your tasks are written down all in one place so you don't forget anything important. And by prioritizing tasks, you plan the order in which you'll do them, so that you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can leave until later.

To-do lists are essential if you're going to beat work overload. When you don't use them effectively, you'll appear unfocused and unreliable to the people around you.

When you do use them effectively, you'll be much better organized, and you'll be much more reliable. You'll experience less stress, safe in the knowledge that you haven't forgotten anything important. More than this, if you prioritize intelligently, you'll focus your time and energy on high-value activities, which will mean that you're more productive, and more valuable to your team.

Keeping a properly structured and thought-out list sounds simple enough. But it can be surprising how many people fail to use them at all, never mind use them effectively.

In fact, it's often when people start to use them effectively and sensibly that they make their first personal productivity breakthroughs, and start making a success of their careers. The video, below, gives some tips on how you can start to use to-do lists more effectively.

Click here to view a transcript of this video.

Preparing a To-Do List

Start by downloading our free template. Then follow these steps:

Step 1:

Write down all of the tasks that you need to complete. If they're large tasks, break out the first action step, and write this down with the larger task. (Ideally, tasks or action steps should take no longer than 1-2 hours to complete.)

Note:

You may find it easier to compile several lists (covering personal, study, and workplace, for example). Try different approaches and use the best for your own situation.

Step 2:

Run through these tasks allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent).

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If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.

Using Your To-Do List

To use your list, simply work your way through it in order, dealing with the A priority tasks first, then the Bs, then the Cs, and so on. As you complete tasks, tick them off or strike them through.

What you put on your list and how you use it will depend on your situation. For instance, if you're in a sales-type role, a good way to motivate yourself is to keep your list relatively short, and aim to complete it every day.

But if you're in an operational role, or if tasks are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to focus on a longer-term list, and "chip away" at it day-by-day.

Many people find it helpful to spend, say, 10 minutes at the end of the day, organizing tasks on their list for the next day.

Tip:

When you're prioritizing tasks, make sure you differentiate between urgency and importance. For more on this, see our article on Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle.

Using Software

Although using a paper list is an easy way to get started, software-based approaches can be more efficient in spite of the learning curve. These can remind you of events or tasks that will soon be overdue, they can also be synchronized with your phone or email, and they can be shared with others on your team, if you're collaborating on a project.

There are many time management software programs available. At a simple level, you can use MSWord or MSExcel to manage your lists. Some versions of Microsoft Outlook, and other email services such as Gmail™, have task lists as standard features. Remember the Milk is another popular online task management tool that will sync with your smartphone, PDA, or email account. It can even show you where your tasks are on a map. Other similar services include Todoist and Toodledo.

One of the biggest advantages to using a software-based approach to manage your list is that you can update it easily. For example, instead of scratching off tasks and rewriting the list every day, software allows you to move and prioritize tasks quickly.

Tip:

All of us think, plan and work differently. A program that works well for a colleague might not work well for you simply because you learn and think in your own way. This is why it's useful to research and try several different ways of compiling your list before deciding on a single system.

Examples

To-do lists can help you get, and stay, on top of important projects and piles of tasks or decisions.

For instance, imagine you're heading a team that's working on a project. There are so many tasks to do, and so many people doing them, that staying on top of it all seems overwhelming.

In this situation, structure your list by team member, writing out tasks and deadlines for every person on the project. Each day as you write out your own tasks that need completion, you can also check your Team To-Do List to see who's working on what, and if anything is due in that day. You can also include other tasks that you need to complete as part of your job.

Or, imagine you're in a sales role and have a long list of people who you need to talk to. You write out a list of everyone you need to call and every client you need to see, and start prioritizing.

You know that one client is really keen on your product and is ready to buy, so you prioritize them with an "A" – this is a prospect that's really worth focusing on. Conversely, you know that another prospect is playing you off against several competitors, meaning that you'll make less profit, and that there's a reasonable chance that you won't get the business. You prioritize this person with a "D". It's worth making some effort here, but you should focus most of your attention on better prospects.

Tip:

To-do lists are particularly useful when you have a small number of tasks that you need to complete. However, they can become cumbersome when you have too many items on them, or when you need to progress multiple projects. At this stage, it's worth starting to use Action Programs, which are designed to manage more complex situations reliably.

Key Points

To be well organized in the workplace, you need to be using to-do lists. By using them, you will ensure that:

You remember to carry out all necessary tasks.
You tackle the most important jobs first, and don't waste time on trivial tasks.
You don't get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs.

Start by listing all of the tasks that you must carry out.

Mark the importance of the task next to it, with a priority from A (very important) to F (unimportant). Redraft the list into this order of importance. Then carry out the jobs at the top of the list first. These are the most important, most beneficial tasks to complete.

You can also use software-based approaches to manage your list. You can often access these from anywhere, and they can often be synced with your Smartphone or PDA.

Download Worksheet

Free To-Do List Template & Examples for Teams

Our To-Do List template provides a structure for teams and individuals that want to organize their workload. From work projects to homework assignments, the template offers guidance to create an efficient and methodical task list.

Before assigning projects and tasks to your team, it’s important to make sure you have organized your team’s workload efficiently. This can be accomplished using a To-Do List Template.

Read on to learn more about what a to-do list is, when you should use one, and how you can create one using our To-Do List Template.

What is a to-do list?

To-do lists are simple yet effective tools that can break down bigger tasks into smaller, concrete steps. They range from a daily task checklist to outlining all the tasks in an entire project. You can make a to-do list for any project anytime your team needs to get something done. Breaking down tasks into concrete steps helps your team reach your goals with ease.

What are the benefits of to-do lists?

There’s a reason why so many people find to-do lists helpful. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits:

Improve organization: To-do lists are a great way to organize tasks. From mundane, everyday activities to more difficult and complex tasks, a to-do list helps you structure your workload and organize everything in one location.
Increase focus: When you know what you have to do in the day ahead, you can focus on what needs to be done. If you don’t have a clear picture of what needs to be completed, you might struggle to focus.
Boost productivity: With an increase in focus, you’re likely to see an increase in productivity, too. Why? Because having a to-do list means you’ll spend less time figuring out what you need to do and more time getting things done.
Better prioritization: If you use our To-Do List Template, you’ll be able to prioritize tasks based on their level of urgency. That way, you know that you’re completing urgent tasks on time.
Offers a sense of accomplishment: There’s no denying it: ticking items off a list is a good feeling. And what better way to do that than with a to-do list?
Reduces stress: Using a to-do list to outline your tasks takes a weight off your mind. You know that everything is scheduled into your workweek, putting you in a much clearer headspace to focus on the tasks at hand.

When should you create a to-do list?

Ultimately, you should create a to-do list whenever you need to get a handle on your workload and organize your tasks. Let’s take a look at some examples.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed. It can feel pretty overwhelming when you have a lot of work in your schedule and no plan to work through them. This is where creating a to-do list can be useful. Outlining all your tasks and activities in a list can help you visualize when and how you’ll be able to get your work done. You can figure out what capacity you have and when you’re able to complete the tasks. As a result, you’ll stop yourself from feeling too overwhelmed by everything you have to do.

If you want to maximize your time. Planning your tasks and activities helps you be more efficient with your time. Your to-do list outlines everything you need to do, allowing you to focus your time and efforts on the right tasks. You won’t waste time on tasks that aren’t necessary.
If you have a lot of upcoming deadlines. When there are a lot of deadlines on the horizon, some of which might be conflicting, it can get tricky. To make sure you hit these deadlines, you can use a to-do list to schedule your tasks and note all your deadlines. As a result, you’ll have a clear picture of what you need to do and when you need to do it to reach your deadlines.

How to use the To-Do List Template

Here’s how you can create your own to-do list with Miro. Start by selecting the To-Do List template. If you already have a physical list, you can take a photo of it and upload it to the online board. If you don’t already have a list, you can start adding all your tasks into the template. Here’s an example of a daily to-do list:

Send an email update to the team: 9 a.m.
Call the design agency to finalize mockups: 11 a.m.
Touch base with recruiters about the new role: 2 p.m.
Meet with the engineering team: 4 p.m.

Assign your tasks to one of three columns: To Do, In Progress, and Done. Within these columns, you can further categorize your tasks by their level of urgency. You’ll be able to move tasks along the board to signify what stage they’re at when you start working.

You can customize this template to create the perfect structure for your list. You can upload files such as photos, videos, and documents to keep all relevant information in one place.

You can also add comments with feedback or questions and @mention your coworkers to send them a notification. They’ll be able to see any changes you make in real-time.

5 tips for creating a successful to-do list

1. Assign due dates: It’s too easy to make a list of tasks you need to accomplish and let it sit on your computer. To incentivize yourself to finish your tasks, try assigning due dates to each item on the list. That makes it simpler for you to track milestones, keep yourself focused, and make sure everything gets done.

2. Sort your list based on priorities: If you don’t have concrete deadlines for each task, you can also sort your list according to the urgency of each task. Put the more urgent tasks toward the top and work your way down. With our To-Do List template, you can categorize low, medium, and high priority tasks.

3. Revise your list daily: At the beginning or end of each day, take a look at your list. Move things around as new needs come up. Take the time to check things off.

4. Reward yourself for completing tasks: Some people like to assign rewards for finishing each task. To motivate yourself, try writing down the ways you plan to treat yourself when you finish something up.

5. Limit yourself to 3 to 5 tasks: We’ve all created a huge checklist for tasks at one time or another. It’s overwhelming to stare at a list with dozens of things you haven’t accomplished. Instead, limit yourself to bite-sized chunks of work and stick to 3 to 5 tasks you can get through in a day or a week.

To-do List Template FAQs

How do I create a to-do list template?

Ultimately, it depends on the software you use. If you use a collaborative platform like Miro, you won’t need to create the template. You can simply choose our existing template and customize it to suit your needs. If you need a printable to-do list, you can download Miro’s template as a PDF file.

How many items should you put on your to-do list?

It’s completely up to you. It all depends on how much capacity you have and what your upcoming deadlines look like. Typically speaking, we’d suggest three to five tasks per day, but that depends on what the tasks are, how long they’ll take, and how difficult they are.

What’s the difference between a to-do list and a task list?

There’s not much difference. They both outline specific tasks that need to be completed by a certain time. However, a task list is generally the term used concerning a specific project.

90,000 The Perfect To-Do List: How to Make and Follow. 10 Rules

Life

Author Irina Rudevich

August 04, 2020

Coaches are advised to make lists to stay productive and achieve goals. At the same time, it is not enough just to write out upcoming meetings and classes in a column. We tell you how to make a list that will help you become more effective.

Do not write too much

At first glance, it's simple: write down everything you need to do. “I don’t like to-do lists because they get so overwhelming that they scare you and you don’t want to look at them,” says Julia Morgenstern, organization and productivity expert and author of Time Management. The art of planning and managing your time and your life. To create an effective list, she advises to mention only what you are really ready to work on. Do not mention in it random and unimportant tasks, as well as obviously impossible tasks that you do not want to devote time to yet. For example, you should not set the goal of doing spring cleaning in the schedule of an active working day full of meetings.

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Monitor progress

List up to ten tasks per day. There may be three, six or even one. It is important to single out the main task that will be a priority: it must be completed in any case, the rest are secondary, but the order is not important. Imagine, and if necessary, write down how long it takes to complete each item. It is not necessary to start the morning with the main task. Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at the University of Queensland and co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Power, suggests starting with a few simple things to take them off the list and feel the satisfaction of ticking and progressing.

Break tasks down into subtasks

“Renovating the kitchen” sounds complicated, even if it's a three-month plan. The brain has a hard time navigating the task, and you are depriving it of fueling the joy of a completed task, which can stretch for a long time. Try to write out subparagraphs for global goals. For example: sell old furniture, take measurements, choose and buy tiles, see color options. So you will have small feasible tasks for each day, the implementation of which will systematically lead to the intended goal.

Integrate tasks into the calendar

It is useful to hang the main list in a prominent place to record each new task in it. But it’s better not just to record things in a notebook, but to do it in a diary with the date and day of the week. So you can systematize the information and roughly imagine the workload and prospects. Thus, the list turns into an action plan, especially if you allocate a specific time period for each task.

Set a deadline

Clear deadlines motivate you to work faster and more carefully on a task. At work, they are associated with the end of a project, the day of a presentation, or an important meeting, while personal matters often remain without a time reference. And if you need to get a visa strictly before going on vacation, then learning a foreign language can take years if you do not devote enough time to the goal. Try to set a due date for the task, no matter how important it is. It is possible that sometimes you will have to push back the deadlines, but it is better not to get carried away with this. In this case, task managers come in handy - programs with a reminder function of the remaining time.

Break tasks into groups

Classify each task by purpose, eg family, friends, work, self-development. So you can track which areas of your life do not have enough attention, and which you spend too much time on. It is better to devote time to blocks one by one, rather than switching from work tasks to activities with children and vice versa, this reduces engagement and efficiency.

Make a list of things you don't need

If you often don't have time to do important things, try doing the opposite: write down activities that don't add value. This helps track where minutes and hours go, allocate resources and rethink processes. For example, it's worth spending a little time automating repetitive tasks, including using programs and applications. Perhaps you spend a lot of time looking for dinner recipes, and it would be more convenient to subscribe to a food blog with a selection updated daily. Creating an anti-list is a good psychological relief, allowing you to determine what exactly distracts your attention and steals time. It does not have to be updated weekly: it is enough to spend a few minutes a month on unnecessary tasks.

Fight procrastination

It's easy to get distracted, especially if you work on the Internet and also from home. An extra random tab in the browser - and now, instead of statistics for a report, you are studying a travel article and forwarding topical memes to colleagues. Procrastination is a common occurrence. Sometimes it's good to take a break and take a break from hard work, but it's important to get back to business without wasting too much time. Observe yourself (keeping a diary will help) and evaluate how often you are distracted and by what. Awareness of what is happening will help develop ways to deal with the problem.

Try the Pomodoro Technique

The method was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the early 1990s and got its name from the tomato timer he used. The main task is to divide all tasks into 25-minute intervals, in which it is easiest to completely immerse yourself in work. This is useful if you cannot estimate in advance how long a task will take, and at the same time worry that you are missing other important questions. 25 minutes is a short time, messages in the messenger can wait. After each working interval, you should take a break for five minutes. After four "pomodoros", the author of the technique advises to pause for 20-30 minutes.

Reward yourself for accomplishments

Design rewards based on the difficulty of a task or a closed block of multiple tasks. A sense of completion is a good reward, so for simple daily tasks, a checkmark in the list will be enough to motivate you to move on. For example, if you have been following a healthy diet all week, then you can eat your favorite dessert on Sunday as a bonus. Completion of major projects requires an appropriate reward: whether it be a long-awaited purchase, a pleasure trip or a vacation. The reward system creates a powerful motivation that will help you not to give up and move towards your goal.

8 myths about motivation that prevent you from moving forward .

How to make a to-do list » How to keep a to-do list for a day, a week

More than 40% of the tasks in the task lists remain unfulfilled, iDoneThis calculated. Imagine how much money you will lose if you do not call back 40 percent of your customers or send them a quotation? We will look at how to avoid such losses thanks to the methodology from business guru Stephen Covey, and also tell you how CRM systems help you keep to-do lists.

Content:

I. Why your to-do lists aren't working
II. How to keep a to-do list correctly
1. How to make a to-do list for the week: a planning technique
III. CRM systems for time management

Why your to-do lists don't work

You probably know the feeling when you leave the office after a day's work and realize that you haven't even done half of your planned tasks. Why is this happening? Personal productivity and time management expert David Allen in his book Getting Things Done lists the following reasons:

Distractions divert attention from the main goals and prevent concentration;
People doubt that they can cope with complex tasks, so they put off their implementation and experience stress;
When reviewing the to-do list, it turns out that major changes in life are needed. A huge list of tasks appears, which frightens and paralyzes.

There are other reasons, and no one is protected from them - neither procrastinators nor perfectionists.

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How to Keep a To-Do List Properly

For to-do lists to work, tasks must be sorted in order of importance. An effective prioritization methodology is offered by American management and leadership consultant Stephen Covey . The methodology is based on the Eisenhower matrix: all tasks are distributed into four squares in accordance with their importance and urgency.

Quadrant I urgent and important needs immediate attention. If they are not implemented soon, serious problems will arise. These things need to be dealt with first. But you can’t limit yourself to them, otherwise the emergency will never end.

In order to reduce the number of urgent important tasks every day, Stephen Covey recommends dedicating maximum efforts to the cases from Quadrant II . These are important but not yet urgent tasks. Initially, for this you will have to use the time allotted for squares III and IV and then square I will unload and there will be more free hours.

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How to Make a Weekly To-Do List: A Planning Method

Once you've broken down your tasks and prioritized the important urgent and the important non-urgent, you can start making to-do lists for the day, week, month, quarter, or even year. Stephen Covey advises organizing your activities based on weekly planning . This allows not only to streamline the emergency within one day, but to think over the future.

So, first you need to add major events to the calendar, the dates of which are known in advance: business meetings, business trips, conferences, etc. Then set a few bigger or smaller goals for those 7 days: SMART your goals and break them into day-specific milestones if necessary.

To reduce the amount of to-do lists, delegate everything you can. Stephen Covey recommends using "delegation of leadership". With this approach, the employee is required to end up with a certain result, and how to achieve it, he decides for himself. It is no longer necessary to give each performer strict step-by-step instructions and closely monitor each of his actions. And the result will exceed your expectations. How to learn how to do this, read the article on how to delegate correctly according to the Stephen Covey method.

Read more on the topic
after you have distributed all the tasks for the week, you need to plan every day. In a separate article, we talked about how to make a to-do list for the day.

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CRM systems for time management

Even after learning how to write to-do lists, you can miss something: lose a reminder sticker, get carried away with an important process, just forget about your to-do list.

Such forgetfulness is especially dangerous in business: I didn't call back one client, I forgot to send a commercial offer to another, I didn't come to a meeting with a third - three deals fell through. In order for all tasks to be recorded in one place and remind yourself of yourself, use the CRM system. This is a handy program for managing clients, tasks and deals.
For example, in the cloud-based SalesapCRM CRM system, you can set tasks for yourself and your employees and monitor their implementation. The program itself will notify the employee about the imminent deadline and let the management know about the outstanding task. You can automate task setting. For example, you can set an automatic reminder to renew the contract with the client shortly before its expiration, or contact the buyer some time after the transaction and offer some other product, send a commercial offer, and much more.

Now you know how to properly keep a to-do list. Try using the SalesapCRM program for work tasks, and you will forget about missed deadlines.

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