ESYB2 116 - Proper Ways to Make To-do Lists
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[00:00:00] So you know that to do lists are important for your productivity and that you should do them, but sometimes doing it incorrectly defeats all the purpose of having a to do list. So in this video, I'm going to show you a wrong way to do a to do list. And then we're going to look at the same to do list.

And we're going to have a correct way to do a to do list so you know how yours should look like. And even before I show you a wrong to do list, I want to show you two common errors that come up. The first one is just putting big daunting items that never come off your to do list on your to do list. And not only do they never come off, they also kind of prevent you from starting.

They cause procrastination because they're big and daunting and you feel like, oh my god, I need a huge block of hours. Just to get started with this, it prevents you from starting. The other kind of error is having no detail. And so when you start to do that task, either you're not sure where to start, you feel lost, or you [00:01:00] actually forget what the details were.

So let me I'm going to show you how these two actually show up in a common to do list. So here we have a to do list, maybe for an afternoon or for a day. They're broad items. Do errands. Okay. Work on your business. Okay. Make the world a better place. Pick up the kids. Okay. Got that. Dinner. Got that. That's pretty easy.

Put the kids to bed. Some of these are pretty easy. They're single tasks. But some of them are like, This would take a lifetime to do. Work on your business. This can take also a lifetime, or a day, or a month, or who knows, or a year. It's vague. We don't know what this really means. These are still good reminders, but it's not really enough.

Now, let me show you how to correct this. Here is the way to take the same to do list and change it so that it's helpful. First of all, this thing, the errands, we're going to break it up. First, we'll get a haircut, then do [00:02:00] grocery shopping. Now, you'll notice in the grocery shopping, there's a secondary to do list.

You have an option. If it's convenient for you, and if it doesn't bloat your current to do list, you can just list the things you need to get right in here. You see as a secondary thing so that in the store you go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know exactly what you get and you don't have this moment where I don't know what I'm forgetting.

So you'll go into the store, you'll get what you need and you'll get out of the store way faster. You won't have to come back to the store because you're not going to forget anything. Because sometimes we leave the store and they're like, oh, we forgot to get something and then That causes us to have another trip to the store, sometimes that day, but sometimes in only a day or two later, where if we got everything, we could have waited a week.

So, that's that item. What about work on your business? Now, when you sit down to work on your business, it's really overwhelming. There's so many things to do. So you want to also break that down into small tasks. For example, the first task can be [00:03:00] contact freelancers about web design. Okay, that's a simple thing.

You don't have to work on the web design. This is just the first step of the web design process. Contacting freelancers. Okay, study SEO. Okay, that's a pretty simple task. Call a lawyer. Okay, just a simple phone call. You do that, you cross that off your list. Write a blog post. You do that, you cross that off your list.

Then other things like dinner, put kids to bed, that you can just do, they are okay. Now this other one, make the world a better place, you wouldn't have that in your to do list. Because you'd have to restructure the project into smaller tasks. But first, what is the actual project? Are you making people happier?

Are you opening a non profit? Are you Starting a recycling plant, saving the environment. I think this just needs to get hashed out so you don't want to have things like that. You want to understand what the actual set of tasks will be first. And regarding these [00:04:00] lists, you can take them out. and make separate lists.

You can have secondary to do lists, that's totally fine. As soon as you see that your current to do list is getting a little bit bulky and confusing, then you want to take this and just make it into a separate to do list and work from that to do list. Like, your business to do list is separate, then you're shopping to do list and household to do list, and it's more organized.

You don't have to do it that way. If this is manageable, But if it becomes unmanageable, then you start having separate to do lists. And that's how you do the to do lists correctly. So when you do sit down at your work, for example, you're not confused, you don't forget any tasks, and you go one by one, boom, boom, boom.

And at the end of the workday, you're not going to have the situation where you feel, I didn't get much done. First, you'll know exactly what you got done. And second, You will actually be getting done more because you're not going to be thinking what did I forget? What was the [00:05:00] order? What was important?

You're not going to have any of that confusion and You'll dive right into the tasks, which is the first part of productivity stopping the time wasting and stopping the procrastinations, so you will do more

