Good Morning!
Yesterday we talked about stacking tasks and I briefly walked you through my day. Today I wanted to build on that a little and talk about the pros and cons of task lists. I think we can all agree that in any given day you want to get as much high quality work/productivity done as possible.
Its pretty easy to get lost in all the stuff you want to do or could do without some sort of road map. That’s where most of us have a to-do list.
This takes different forms for different people. Some people swear by writing stuff down and manually checking it off with a pen. Others like to use various task management software. Some like to set reminders on their phone and other devices.
I personally use a combination of Freedcamp, Google calendar, my memory, and help from my assistant. We use Freedcamp to lay out overarching goals, then have a weekly list broken out by day.
We then use Google calendar for appointments and things that require a specific time. My assistant (among many other things) reminds me when there is a holiday because there are roughly 2 million of them a year and I can only remember a couple of them.
Overall this works pretty well for us… it gives you a nice little dopamine release at the end of the day to look back and realize you decimated your list. And therein lies the problem (or at least one of them) with to-do lists.
Its easy to look at a long list of tasks and cross stuff off and feel like you accomplished a lot… but it also puts all those tasks at equal weight. It is also an easy way to give yourself permission to stop for the day if you manage to rapidly get through your task list quickly. “Hey I got everything done I was supposed to do today!”
But did you really get the most out of your day? Or could you have made another video? reached out to another lead? Replied to another message? Sent another email? Or an even more important question… did the things on your list actually move your business forward?
Or was it just a bunch of busy work? So the way I have found to maintain the integrity of a to-do list is this: Lay out literally everything you have to get done in the short, medium, and long term.
Put them in order of priority starting with the stuff you need to stay in business (licenses etc…) then the stuff that will make you money and grow your business, then on down the list in terms of importance. Reverse engineer the steps needed for the Profiit generating tasks and figure out when you want to complete them by. Then create a template for every week. Include in it the things you have to do every week and assign them to the days you have to do them.
Then take the most important tasks and front load them on Monday (or whatever day you start your week with) Get as many of them done as possible as soon as possible so if they end up taking longer than expected you have the rest of the week to work on them. Then just go on down the list.
If you run out of stuff by the end of the week, then do some low level tasks that don’t require you to be at your best (I will go into more detail on this in the future), or work on a side project.
You will also want to reevaluate why you ran out of tasks and adjust the next week accordingly. I feel like I rambled a bit there, but this is an important topic. So essentially the pros of a to-do list are you have a road map and a picture of what you need to get done.
The cons are that they can be used to make you feel like you accomplished more than you did, and that they can give you permission to stop working when you can do more.
Do you use any kind of task/to-do list? Do you agree with my analysis here?
If so let me know in the Profiit Academy Facebook group.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Best,
CMW