Level-up Your To-Do List With These 6 Tips

It’s August, the sun is setting a touch earlier, and maybe you just came back from vacation. (My husband and I just got back from visiting his family in India, and the jet lag is killer!)

Whether you’ve had time off or just time indulging a sweet summer mindset, it never feels good to sit down at your desk and face the massive monster of a to-do list that has been awaiting your return.

Many of us have been writing to-do lists since we were probably 12 years old, but often when we look at our to-do lists, we don’t even know where to start – which means it takes us minutes, if not hours, to get ourselves organized enough to begin.

Over the years, I’ve learned how to make to-do lists way more effective, and I’m going to give you six tips on doing just that.

Tip number one: whenever you add a task to your to-do list, also add a link or pathway to the materials you’ll need for the task.

For instance, if your task is “rewrite outline for presentation,” you might also add the link to the Google Doc where you’re writing your outline. This keeps you from wasting time and mental energy digging through folders when you sit down to start the task.

Tip number two: always write down where you left off on something. For example, if you’re writing an article and you’ve already done the first three paragraphs, note that on your to-do list so that you’re ready to jump back in.

You might also add your idea or plan for the next two paragraphs, so you know exactly what you need to do in order to finish up. Which leads us to…

Tip number three: be specific. We often fill our to-do lists with very vague ideas or topics that aren’t helpful. 

For example, I have a list of newsletter ideas. I was just looking at it, and one of the ideas on the list is “newsletters and chocolate store.” To be honest, I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that down!

It would have been helpful to have written a few quick notes about what that phrase actually meant to me and what I wanted to write about. 

If you’re adding any sort of content creation task to your to-do list – whether that’s creating a newsletter, a video, an article, etc. – be sure to add three or four bullet points underneath that task to give yourself a brief outline.

Tip number four: sort your to-do list into categories. At the very least, you can have the general categories of Personal and Business, but I find that it’s even more helpful to further divide my business category.

If you’re like me, you might have specific projects or aspects of your business that you’re working on – e.g. your group program, your private program, your marketing – and having those categories on your to-do list can make it easier to process.

Tip number five: keep your to-do list electronically. As much as I love the idea of writing everything down by hand with pretty pens, you’d waste a lot of time rewriting it every day, especially if you’re being as detailed as I’ve recommended with these other tips.

You might use a program like Todoist or Notion, or Evernote, which is what I use. I have a notebook in Evernote with a note in it just for my to-do list. I copy and paste my formatting, tasks, and notes, and add links to any reference documents that I might need for each task. I have a whole list of staple reference documents that I keep with my to-do list. 

Tip number six: write a monthly, rather than weekly, to-do list. As an entrepreneur, things often get moved around from week to week, which means you don’t often finish everything on your list for a given week. 

For me, this is key because I find that we grossly overestimate what we can get done in a week, but tend to underestimate what we can get done in a month. We beat ourselves up if we don’t finish all of our tasks for a week, but we can look at a monthly to-do list and feel much more satisfied about how much work we’re getting done.

So my invitation to you this week is to upgrade your to-do list. Take whichever of these tips resonate with you, and make your to-do list work for you.

If facing your to-do list alone still feels daunting, I invite you to join us at our upcoming Virtual Flow Method Get it Done Day on August 24. 

On Get it Done Days, I’ll walk you through exactly how to use my Flow Method – my process for getting three months of work done in two days – and then we’ll spend the day flowing with a group of other entrepreneurs. 

By the end of the day, you’ll not only have made tons of progress on whatever project(s) you choose to work on – you’ll also understand exactly how the Flow Method works so you can recreate the experience over and over again for yourself.

Here’s to fighting overwhelm and getting it done, little by little by little.