Organising a to-do list
Are you often facing a huge to-do list, filled with an endless number of tasks ? Where do you start ? And, maybe even more importantly how can you still feel really good even when you only finished only one of those tasks during an entire day ? I’ll tell you how I do it.
There are numerous books, articles, etc telling you how to organize your work. I’ve tried a lot of them but I’ll try and explain which one works best for me and why.
Let’s start by taking our to-do lists (don’t get depressed just yet 
). I have 4 different kinds of tasks :
- urgent (aren’t they all urgent ?)
- important
- urgent & important
- not urgent nor important
Now, organize your tasks and decide if they are urgent, important, urgent & important or none of the above. Some will be obvious, others might not be so clear but think about it and assign them to one of the 4 categories.
Done ? Good job ! Which one would you start with ? The urgent ones ? Or maybe the important tasks first ? Let’s think about this for a moment : why would you start with an urgent task if that task is not important ? If it’s not important, than it can wait. Finishing an important task will also make you feel better once it’s done, since it was so important.
This means the correct answer is :
1) urgent & important
2) important
3) urgent
4) not urgent nor important
If a task is urgent AND important, than it’ll better be on top of your list ! Second on the list are all your important tasks, urgent tasks come next. Even though they are urgent they can wait till all the important once are completed. And, waaaay in the back come the not urgent not important tasks.
Organise your to-do list in this way, and you will feel satisfied at the end of your day, even when you only finished one task on your huge list !
Which effective way of sorting your to-do lists have you discovered & work for you ? Let us know in the comments !
Pieter Van Impe
What about severals important tasks at the same time?
@Kenny : you start with the one with the closest deadline
kind of obvious , but priorities can change rather quickly
perhaps you should eliminate the “non-urgent, non-important” issues from your list altogether. it’ll give you more time to focus the rest. it works for me!
But, what fun is that? I guess it depends if you consider the fun things you do in your free time important or not, and the determines whether or not you have the “Non-urgent, non-important” category. I guess I consider experimenting and fun things kind of important, so maybe you are right. Haha, I am not sure.
actually I like the issue because we all deal with it and face it every day. We all know that important is important but sometimes we ‘make it temporarily unimportant’ just because you want to check for ex. photo’s of your latest shoot.
I believe what Pieter says is correct, I also believe that you can read this article over from time to time to help you being consequent in the rule.
In this day and age, basic customer service seems left behind (have you been served by a 15yo at the local hardware store lately?).
My first job after leaving high school was based on 100% customer service and these days my to-do list is still prioritised around my customers. I never leave them hanging! Word of mouth is your best marketing tool so always look after your customers above and beyond the call of duty!
Oh yeah - and when I write out a to-do list, I love crossing off each item - it really makes me feel like I’ve achieved a lot by the end of the day!
@Kenny
Pieter is correct.
Another alternative is to delegate the work to others. Important shouldn’t mean you alone should do it.
But when you delegate important work, make sure the person receiving the work understands its importance.