How To Make Your To-Do List More Effective

Do you feel that your to-do list is just managing the day to day and you don’t have time for the things you feel are important? Well, that’s the issue I am answering this week.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Download the FREE Areas of Focus Workbook More about the Time Sector System The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 191 Hello and welcome to episode 191 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. I get a lot of questions about to-do lists and why they become lists of urgent and short-term and unimportant tasks, leaving you with little to no time for doing work you want to do. It’s a big problem for many people and often leads people into quitting a system or wasting time trying to find new apps. Fortunately, there is a fix and that is what I will share with you today. Before we get to the question, I would like to say if you don’t already know, I have a YouTube channel with almost a thousand videos on Todoist, Evernote, and productivity and goal planning tips and tricks. It’s really where my productivity coaching and teaching began. I also have an extensive blog on my website that is likely to have answers to your many questions.  So if you are looking for answers to productivity, goal planning, and time management problems, check out these places. I’m sure you’ll find a lot of answers there.  All the links to these sites are in the show notes.  Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.  This week’s question comes from Oliver. Oliver asks: Hi Carl, thank you for all the content you provide. It’s a treasure box of information. I have a question. I started using a to-do list about six months ago, and in the early days, it worked. But now, I find I spend all my time just checking off low-value tasks given to me by other people and I just don’t have time to work on my goals. Do you have any tips on making my to-do list work better?  Hi Oliver, thank you for your question.  This is a common problem and one that can occur when we start using digital to-do lists. In our enthusiasm to get stuff into the to-do list, we throw all sorts of things in there. In many ways, this is important because we need to make collecting a habit.  I remember, when I first started using a digital to-do list on my phone. It felt strange picking up my phone in a meeting to add a task. It got a little better when I began using an iPad in meetings, but even that was uncomfortable at first, because being an early adopter, many people in the meeting looked at me with weird faces.  Adding a lot of unnecessary tasks to your task manager is almost a right of passage for anyone wanting to master to-do lists. It’s impossible to know what tasks we will remember and which ones we will forget. So we need to collect everything. Indeed, to become more effective at processing, we need to practice and the only way to practice is to throw everything into your to-do list right?  However, as you say, Oliver, eventually, this method leaves us with to-do lists that are overwhelming and often focuses our attention on the latest and loudest tasks, and these tasks don’t necessarily move much forward.  So, how do you make your to-do list more effective?  Well, you need to step back and develop your goals and areas of focus.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that if you are planning on doing a summer reset, you should use the opportunity to step back and think about what you want—your long-term goals—as well as your areas of focus.  You see,