Life’s To Do List

Thanks to the Inter­net, we are con­stantly inter­con­nected to each other and our means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, among other things, is pretty solid.  Inter­est­ingly enough, just because com­put­ers and phones have made life a lot more effi­cient, it doesn’t mean I have less to do whatsoever.

For me, it means I could do a lot more with my time.  And the amount of stuff to do is essen­tially end­less.  There is no ‘off but­ton’ to life and I embrace that.  The amount of stuff to do will never end.  We can’t just sit still for very long, there’s always some­thing; we’ve got lad­ders to climb, peo­ple to see, high­est selves to ful­fill, and so forth.

Sometimes we make lists to help us out.

Think about the times you used a shop­ping list.  Didn’t that make things much easier?

Instead of casu­ally brows­ing the store aisles, if you have a list, you know what you want so you walk with pur­pose.  If you get dis­tracted, all you have to do is to look back at the list.

Life’s To Do List

So why make a list only when it’s time to go shop­ping? What about mak­ing the rest of your life as easy as that?

Our lives are full of poten­tial and how will they ever be real­ized if we don’t jot down those awe­some things we have to do?  You don’t have to be the stereo­typ­i­cal “busy busi­ness­man” to use a to-do list, plan­ner or calendar.

The same way you would walk with pur­pose through the super mar­ket, you could walk with deter­mi­na­tion and pur­pose through­out the whole of your life, mak­ing you much more pro­duc­tive and full of gratification.

How to start a to-do-list for LIFE (work, school, hobbies, etc!)

There is no best-way to go about doing these things since we are all dif­fer­ent and there’s a mil­lion ways to do this, but there are sev­eral tips I could share to guide you.

1. Choose your medium and keep it simple.

• Prefer­ably, choose some­thing you could take with you all the time and add to on the fly.  I take advan­tage of the fact that I always have my phone with me and use my iPhone’s basic Notes pro­gram to main­tain a list.  Be wary of fancy apps or com­plex sys­tems as they may eas­ily take up more time to man­age and main­tain than is necessary.
• I also like to go back to the basics and just use a pen and paper! Some­times there’s noth­ing bet­ter than jot­ting down tasks on paper and adding ideas as things pop into your mind through­out the day.
• Another option is to use this Chrome extension called Momentum which will replace any new blank tab with a to-do list. I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to, I still love to use a simple notepad, but it might work for you.

2. Keep your list visible or always on you!  If you put away your to-do-list, you will prob­a­bly for­get about it.

If you decide to use your com­puter to main­tain a list, keep the list open all the time.  Pur­posely place a short­cut on your desk­top, start menu, on the quick launch (or pinned to your taskbar) and keep the file open… get the idea?  You keep your web browser open 24/7, so why not sim­ply keep your to-do list open all the time as well? In other words, I’m telling you to prac­tice the oppo­site of “out of sight, out of mind!”

3. Split your list into two sections: High priority and normal priority.

High priority items are things you want to get done urgently or today.

Nor­mal pri­or­ity items are every­thing else.  Through­out the day, I often remem­ber new things I want to do and get fresh ideas and I will imme­di­ately whip out my phone and add it into the list.  Some­times I’ll have a third sec­tion at the end which are super ran­dom but fun things such as “Find a tree to climb, go horse­back rid­ing, roller blade, etc”.

4. Do the most frightening or challenging task on your list FIRST.

This is the best tip I could give you! When you get that thing done first, you will not only feel great about yourself, but the rest of the day will feel like a breeze! Due to subconscious-self-sabotage, you will want to put off the hardest (or most frightening) task off until later (or forever), but don’t give in!

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step” – Lao Tzu

Just remember that with baby steps, anything is possible.  If a task seems too daunting or overwhelming, break it down into smaller steps so that it becomes a lot easier to deal with. Once you build up some momentum, the inertia will carry you throughout the day and everything gets pretty awesome once you get in the zone.

It feels great to get things done in an efficient manner and there’s no reason to stress when a simple list can keep us on track and prevent us from feeling scatter brained.  I would love to hear any tidbits you got that help keep your life organized since we all have our own perspective on things and can teach and learn from each other to lift each other up. 🙂