To do list for time managment

Keeping a To Do List is the first step in Task Management.

Keep a To Do List

Task Management IS Time Management. Time is a finite thing. There is no such thing as 'spare time'. It's an illusion. There are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week.

Task Management is the nitty gritty of getting things done (GTD) with the time you have. It doesn't matter what the project or goal is, tasks, actions, or activities must happen to complete the project or reach the goal. Good task management increases productivity and happiness.

Happiness? YES! Happiness. If you are getting more done of the things you want done, doesn't that make you happy?

Everyone uses task management. Everyone has tasks and those tasks must be managed. The question is how well are those tasks managed?

You've probably heard that you should make a written to do list and prioritize it. That's absolutely true. Without a written to do list things get forgotten. Without priorities, you end up filling your day with relatively unimportant stuff.

What goes on the list?

First of all, you will need a minimum of 2 lists; a Master list of everything you've got going on, and a daily list of what you want to get done that day.

I currently use 4 lists. My master list contains all my projects and standalone tasks, All other lists are a subset of the master list. My work list contains all those projects and tasks that are about my job, my home list contains all the projects and chores in my personal life. And then there's the shopping list.

What kind of to do lists you use is really up to you. It must work for you. It must fit with your personality and life style. Think about what works for you now and how to improve on it. Think about what isn't working and why, so you can fix it.

It will take a lot of trial and error to find what's right for you. But don't give up. Written task management not only makes you more efficient and productive, but more EFFECTIVE too.

Are you a list maker? I have been, sporadically. I followed the recommendations and made master lists and daily to do lists. I'd make lots of lists, and lose them. I tried daily planners, DayTimer and DayRunner amoung others. I tried notebooks, large and small.

My biggest problem was keeping them up to date. I hate doing something twice. That's what happened with anything on paper. If it didn't get done on one day, I would have to write it again on my next daily list. That's inefficient repetition. If it was an on going project, I would find myself witting the same item over and over again. That got depressing.

The master list would become overwhelmingly long. So I moved things to 'project lists' and would only put one task related to the project on the master list. But then I'd get frustrated flipping through my projects to find what to do next.

As things got cleared off the master list, that list got messy and had to be re-written also. This repetition drove me nuts.

This wasn't time management, it was list management! I felt I was taking more time playing with the lists than getting anything done.

I gave up on keeping a master list. It got too long. Just looking at the list would make my head spin. I dropped to keeping a kind of combination list. What I wanted to get done that day and reminders of things I might forget. Things like "write the article for the company newsletter" and 'Research software for Sales forecasting".

This list was too fuzzy to be real productive. It seemed everything on it made me want to cringe or sigh because they were too big. I would stop keeping the list.

But I kept coming back to making lists because they work. Every time I listed what I wanted to get done and checked the list consistently, I got more stuff done.

Keep a To Do List

With each cycle of list making, time management got a little easier. I would think about what went right and what went wrong and make an adjustment.

That's what you need to do. Keep making lists and adjusting what goes on them and how you use them.

Being involved in computers I turned to them and currently use ThinkingRock and the GTD method for my to do lists.

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