Put your brain on the clock. You'll get more done, guaranteed.
An endless to-do list leaves us feeling like we haven’t accomplished all we’ve set out to knock off in a given day. The problem is often one of expectations: We simply feel we can accomplish more than we can realistically accomplish in a given day.
The common cure for the to-do list blues is asking yourself a simple one-two punch question: When will I do this, and where?
When we make commitments to clients, we keep them. We know that when they block out time on their calendar for us that we must keep our promise to honor it when the time comes. It’s funny that no matter how much email we have in our inbox, a client meeting is an “I must go do this now” event.
Why aren’t YOU your own client, then? For those tasks you’ve been meaning to accomplish for the past two weeks, why haven’t you set a specific time on your calendar to do them? Why haven’t you set aside twenty minutes or an hour to tackle that task that’s been nagging you every night as you’re drifting off to sleep?
Scheduling your day with honest estimates about the duration of each task will quickly force you to prioritize and focus during the day. What’s more, you’ll feel better at the end of the day having kept more realistic promises to yourself and your business.
The “power boost” for this tip is scheduling a task or two before you check your email. Email often derails us from our important tasks, causing us to focus on the urgent at the expense of the truly important. If you commit to scheduling one important task to accomplish BEFORE you check your email every morning, you’ll be surprised how much you accomplish each week.
Photo credit: bearpark
