Did you know? More time is WASTED in your workday than you realize.
You go about your day, doing what you’ve always done and you don’t question it, because you’ve seen or heard SO many experts and consultants recommend the process you’re following and you know SO many professionals who follow it alongside you.
So, you think, “This must be right. This is good!”
But it’s not.
What are we talking about?
Creating a new, to-do list every morning for the day.
A classic example would be this little gem:
“Use the first 30 minutes of your day to create a to-do list for the day.”
It’s very common, but unproductive—and even damaging—advice.
Other unproductive advice recommends WEEKLY planning, too, on a Friday or a Monday—or worse, on a Sunday!—for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes for the upcoming week.
Taking ANY of this advice will consistently and needlessly WASTE… your… time.
Why? Because you could be accomplishing tasks and making progress in the time you spend writing, rewriting and consolidating to-do lists—AGAIN and AGAIN, over and over, every day.
Thirty minutes a day for daily planning is 2½ hours every week or 125 hours annually. This is more than 3 WEEKS per year. LOST.
But wait. It gets worse.
In addition to time wasted, the daily to-do list you create on a paper—or even put into a digital app on your phone—is terribly incomplete and it’s full of HOLES. These are STAND-ALONE to-do lists and they are TOOLS, not systems, and they are NOT all-inclusive of everything you need to do.
And while you may nod and agree by saying, “That’s right, it’s a list of only what I want to do today. It’s not a list of everything under the sun,” THAT is exactly the problem.
With a stand-alone to-do list, you are not able to plan efficiently or prioritize effectively and this leaves BIG GAPS in how you can manage tasks. Not only this, but the process used with these tools actually eats up more time than is really necessary for planning and prioritizing tasks every day.
Creating a new to-do list every morning actually holds you back from creating the momentum you need to make serious progress during the day. Further, it’s all too easy to miss, lose and forget things to do as well.
Let’s address these issues one at a time.
Stand-alone to-do lists are incomplete and unreliable.
When you create a to-do list on paper or in a task app on your phone and the list does NOT include ALL of your tasks and responsibilities, you don’t have a SYSTEM or even a comprehensive PLAN. You have a LIST—a partial list—and it’s unreliable.
With just a short list of things to do, you’re lacking a bird’s-eye view and full awareness of all of your responsibilities.
How do you know if you’re planning and prioritizing accurately and appropriately when you’re only looking at a fraction of all of your tasks?
Tasks come from more than TEN different sources in your workday, so if you make a list, it is always going to be incomplete and therefore inaccurate, and not something that you can count on. A stand-alone to-do list, no matter where it is, whether physical or digital, is not likely to include the tasks from email, voice mail, social media, meetings, the papers and files on your desk, and all of the other sources of tasks in your day.
Without being able to include ALL tasks from ALL sources into a SYSTEM—quickly and easily—you have a road block in the way of task visibility and awareness… as well as planning and prioritizing… and also productivity and progress. Plus,it’s all too easy to miss, lose or forget something—or a LOT of things.
Further, a list written on paper is usually written in no particular order, which makes it impossible to keep priorities straight. Even the “due dates” in a task app are misleading as they only designate when something is DUE, not when you need to DO something or take action.
Planning only once a day causes DELAYS in your productivity and progress.
The historically recommended “daily planning” is SCARY, because it highlights the fact that task management is NOT ongoing. Daily planning and prioritizing are accomplished only ONCE a day—first thing in the morning—when you “regroup” and “catch up” on all that happened the day before. This is terrible!
If you ONLY look at the plan you made for the day, how are you managing NEW tasks as they appear during the rest of the day? How are you managing tasks when your day changes and priorities shift? How are you managing next action steps after a previous step was taken so you know what to do next?
The answer is… you’re not.
After you create the initial plan for the day, you’re only seeing a FRACTION of your tasks. You’ve left out all of the other tasks you’re aware of, but are not important to do today. They are missing a plan.
You’re also watching NEW tasks roll in from the more than TEN different sources of tasks in your day, and they are not getting incorporated into a plan either. At least not until the next morning, if they get included at all.
This means your task management view is limited to just that ONE little plan for the day. Everything else is left out. Now you have blinders on, which limits your awareness and your ability to manage tasks with accuracy and agility.
Tasks are piling up—both new and old. Tasks you’ve already seen, but couldn’t do anything with.
This leaves the door open to miss, lose or forget all kinds of tasks, but you’re also more likely to miss out on identifying a new priority as compared to what you had originally planned to do for that day.
When faced with uncertainty, confidence drops, progress slows and stress increases.
The next sign of trouble—and next big GAP you’ll try to bridge—is figuring out what to do next after you complete a task. This is the “regrouping” mentioned earlier, but the trouble is, you have to check a LOT of task sources—including that to-do list or task app—and regroup on the fly.
When tasks are all spread out among their various sources, it’s hard to compare what needs to be done. The time is takes to plan and prioritize during the day and outside of the original daily plan takes more time than it should, since you’re trying to prioritize in your head.
And finally, a third big GAP you’ll try to bridge is the one created when an important task or priority *IS* missed, lost or forgotten.
Consider what it costs and the scramble that occurs after a task has been remembered. Domino effects, negative outcomes, and harmful ramifications can result, and then the situation needs to be remedied.
Things can easily spin out of control once ONE important task is missed. It can put you behind, cost you more time and delay progress on everything else you had planned to do that day or in the coming days.
Save time, be more productive, make more progress and reduce stress by using a continuous process for the management of tasks.
Without a system in which to continuously add tasks and manage them in their various stages of action, you’re flying blind, and tasks are piling up during the day. You may see new tasks roll in, but without a system in which to put them, there is no way to manage them efficiently or effectively. You might try to remember the important ones, but that’s a gamble and many tasks will likely be missed, lost or forgotten.
Instead of taking the historical “advice,” skip daily planning and instead build a COMPLETE, digital inventory of ALL tasks and then follow a continuous, fluid, ongoing process for managing tasks.
Consolidate and document ALL of your tasks into ONE centralized, digital Task List. And no, I don’t mean using the to-do app on your phone. That’s still a stand-alone to-do list.
Use a full-screen Task List on your computer that’s part of your Email system, which should also include Contacts, Calendar and Notes.
Include ALL tasks from ALL sources, no matter the source or when you’ll take action. Break projects down into FIRST or NEXT action steps and be sure to make them the smallest step possible. Once you’ve added every task you can find, you will have a complete inventory of tasks.
The way to determine when to DO each task is by giving them different ACTION DATES in the future. Give each task a target date of action, no matter when, and you will be able to prioritize immediately, knowing you can’t do everything today.
With a complete, centralized inventory of tasks you can, in SECONDS, continuously and accurately…
- Add NEW tasks as they appear and give them a target date of action (a Do Date, not a Due Date!) even if you aren’t taking action today or this week.
- Rephrase next action steps after taking prior steps, and target new dates for action.
- Reprioritize tasks as your day changes and priorities shift.
- Delete tasks that are completed and have no further action steps or follow ups.
There are more than TEN different sources of tasks in your day.
There should only be ONE way to manage them.
With a complete, centralized, digital inventory of tasks and a continuous process to follow, you will have established your Task Management SYSTEM. This will make documenting, planning, prioritizing and accomplishing tasks MUCH faster and easier, and the system will always be accurate and up-to-date.
Imagine having all of your tasks in ONE system, giving you a clear, bird’s-eye view of tasks—100% visibility and awareness of all of your responsibilities.
This is no different than using ONE digital calendar for ALL of your appointments and adding new appointments immediately as they appear, giving you an accurate, bird’s-eye view of all of your time commitments.
Using a complete task management system, you stay in control of tasks and be ready for anything. You’ll be able to plan efficiently, prioritize effectively, and turn on a dime when priorities shift without missing, losing or forgetting anything. You won’t have to work reactively and you won’t waste time “regrouping” after finishing a task to figure out what to do next.
And best of all, you’ll be able to get those 2 1/2 hours BACK every week, because you won’t have to spend 10-30 minutes every morning to review, regroup, and create a NEW plan for only a day.
Imagine getting a handle on ALL of your responsibilities, tasks, projects and reminders.
Think of all the balance, confidence, and peace of mind you’ll gain when you have everything under control, knowing that nothing has been missed, lost or forgotten.
Imagine the progress you can make every day in the time you’ve saved by using a system and not a stand-alone to-do list.
Think about how much better and more accomplished you will feel at the end of every day.
Imagine realizing… your workday just got easier.
