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Estimating time
Prioritised To Do Lists
What are To Do Lists?
'To Do Lists' are lists of tasks to be carried out to achieve goals. These
goals might be specific targets, or may simply be the efficient administration
of your day. By ordering these tasks in order of importance, you have
prioritised your To Do List.
Whilst To Do Lists are very simple, they are also extremely powerful, both as
a method of organising yourself and as a method of reducing stress. Often
problems may seem intimidatingly large or you may have a seemingly huge number
of demands on your time. This may leave you with a feeling of loss of control,
or of being overburdened with work, or of facing hopelessly huge obstacles.
Getting Back Control
The solution is often simple: write down the tasks that face you, and if they
are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem
large, break them down again. Do this until everything that you have to do is
listed. Once you have done this, run through these jobs allocating priorities
from A (very important) to F (unimportant). If too many tasks have a high
priority, run through the list again and demote the less important high
priority items. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.
You will then have a precise, sharp plan that you can use to eliminate the
problems you face in the order that they need to be eliminated. This allows
you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones, and
gives you control of the problems facing you, reducing stress hugely.
Even if the things you want to achieve do not seem overwhelming, To Do Lists
are extremely useful ways or organising yourself efficiently, and of
motivating yourself to achieve what needs to be achieved efficiently.
Preparing To Do Lists
It is a good idea to prepare To Do Lists whenever suits you: some people
recommend doing them at the end of each day for the next day, others at the
beginning of a day, others whenever you feel that things are getting out of
control - the important thing is that you use them in the way that suits you.
If you haven't used To Do Lists before, try them: they are one of the keys
to being really productive.
Estimating time
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