Evil Problem 1
Do you have an evil to-do list? In this video I'm going to share with you four signs that your task list may be working against you, but I'm going to give you four solutions to those big problems.
Now, number one, you may have an evil to-Do list if everything on your list is to even, what do I mean by too even? Well, I mean that as you scroll through your various tasks, there is no distinction between what is important and what can wait until later, what's urgent and what's not. What needs to be done today and what can you wait to do later in the week? As we look at this sample to-do list on the screen in front of us here, it's really hard, if not impossible, to determine what we should be doing next.
So how can we go about and solve this problem? Well, there's a couple of ways in which we can address this issue. Here I am using Google tasks and one of the fastest, if not easiest ways is to use the star feature. So I can take a look at maybe the two or three tasks that I need to do first or the things that I want to accomplish by the end of the day and I can star them and they're going to automatically appear at the top of my screen.
Within your respective task list, you may be able to add a flag, you may be able to add colors and some other way to prioritize certain tasks, but even if you don't want to use these star feature, there's a few other options we have available to us as well. We can always add a separate list which will highlight the things that we want to work on next.
So if I take those same tasks for example, I can simply drag them over into this second list which I've called priorities. So with this setup, it's very easy for me to see the distinction between the things I should be working on right now and the things that can wait until later.
Evil Problem 2
Number two, you may have an evil to-do list if your to-do list is too vague. What do I mean by vagueness? I mean that as we scroll through most of the tasks in this sample to-do list, it can be difficult to determine exactly what I should be doing.
So for example, track marketing data. Do I need a payment provider marketing strategy review? Am I creating a marketing strategy review? Am I reviewing in an existing document exactly what am I doing when it comes to a number of these tasks? If the to-dos on our lists are too short or too vague, we can often waste a lot of valuable time spinning our wheels and asking ourselves, get client feedback. Well, which client? What type of feedback and how are we going to collect that feedback?
The more time we spend deciphering our own - Task, the more we are liable to skim down to something else which is more action oriented or something that we can engage with right away. Even though something like this one here with the question Mark May in fact be the most important thing on my to-do list.
So in order to avoid having too vague of a to-do list, we want to make sure that we start each of our to-dos with an action verb. So for example, important client calls. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with that, but I can make this particular task so much more actionable by just changing a few words.
I'm going to turn important client calls into schedule two phone calls with three key clients. Here I've made it so much more actionable. Number one, I know exactly the type of call or the type of meeting that I'm doing and I've also set a very specific limit in terms of how many clients I'm going to be engaged with.
Looking a little further down the list, I have something that says last month's website stats. Well, I'm just going to change one word, which is going to make this so much more actionable. I'm going to say review last month's website stats. Just having that word review tells me exactly what I should be doing and no longer do I have to second guess or start scanning for something else on my list.
Evil Problem 3
Now number three, you may have an evil to-do list if your task list is to inactive. And what I mean by that is that you're not reviewing it or you're not engaging with your task list on a regular basis. This so often happens when we have to go to another screen or another tab to view our task list.
Fortunately here within Google tasks, we can toggle between Google Calendar and our full task list or multiple lists if we have them on the exact same screen. In addition, we can also take advantage of the Google side panel here on the right hand side. You don't have to have it viewable at all times, but if I want to come over here and click on tasks, I can see all of my tasks here on the right hand side. If I have started a few things, I can focus on those items here and I can also easily navigate between my different lists.
But another thing that we want to keep in mind is the ability to drag any of these tasks onto my actual calendar here. As I'm looking at my day tomorrow, I can see that I have a lot of time available in the afternoon. So maybe that's a perfect time to review last month's website stats or maybe that's also a great time where I can schedule those phone calls. I can simply drag it from my task list on the right and put it directly on my calendar.
But keep in mind you don't have to give every task a specific time either. Maybe I need to set up these client referrals here. I'm going to come down to the date. I'm going to schedule it for the 18th and I'm purposely not going to select a time. I'm going to say, okay, and you can see here within my calendar, it's going to appear at the very top. So I don't have a particular time to accomplish this task, but I can see it here at the top of my calendar.
And even if that is minimized, even if I'm accessing my calendar on my phone, these tasks will appear as long as I have my tasks enabled here on the left hand side under my calendars. This is a great way to make sure that you don't leave things behind or that your task list does not become out of date.
Evil Problem 4
Last but not least, you may have an evil to-do list if your task list is too long. When we have too many things staring back at us at any given time, it is only human nature for us to scan and scan and often read too many things at any given time.
Every time that you've completed a task, you don't want to come back here and have to review everything on this list. Not only is that going to be time consuming, but it also tends to increase our levels of stress and worry as we think about all of the things that we need or want to accomplish.
Now, we've already seen how we can separate our lists by priorities, but you may want to consider separating your lists even further. Here within my Google Tasks account, I've created two additional lists called this Week and Next Week so I can determine what are the smaller number of tasks that I want to accomplish this week and which ones can wait until next week.
This can help me be extra focused as I drag in a number of my tasks here under this week, and then I can safely say, you know what, some of these other tasks I can defer to sometime in the future. This way I can always minimize things such as the next week or my master list and just focus on the things that I want to hear.
And if I am taking advantage of the Google Calendar integration, once again, I can simply focus on those tasks on the right hand side of the menu. So if you feel that your to-do list is actively working against you, consider these four evil criteria and how you can solve these most common issues. And if you have any further questions about how you can keep your to-do list more organized and relevant, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching this video, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
