How to improve your Time Management skills and blast through your To-Do list in 4 steps

A to-do list can be both a blessing and a curse - it relieves the stress off your poor brain because you no longer need to juggle with a hundred mental tasks, but now you're also supposed to ... do those tasks? Now this is where it gets confusing. It simply isn't enough to "know" what to do in order to get it done effectively. But I don't really blame you - nobody ever teaches us this, neither at school, not at home, and you just get the label “unmotivated“ on your forehead for not knowing how to tackle a to-do list. There is a light in the tunnel tho! I utilise a number of steps when I construct my daily list of tasks, which help me actually get most of it done (yes, I almost never get it done to 100%, but even 70% is better than nothing at times).

One reason I think the to-do list is extremely important is because of the powerful motion of being on autopilot. It can be both a good and bad thing, and as you can expect, it is a bad thing when you aren’t the person that has set up the pre-programmed course of the flight. If you act on your day because of your usual quirks and habits solely, you’ll only get as far as you got yesterday, and probably less far. So why perpetuate this lazy vicious cycle?

By the end of this article, and if you implement my 4-step process, you’ll be at least one step ahead of the curve, you’ll get off track much more rarely, you’ll increase the number of things you get done in a day and most importantly, at least in my humble opinion, you’ll feel more in control.

The Productivity Headstart

The first step to a day full of completed tasks is to know what you need to do in the given day, duh. So you should sit down either at the beginning of the day or the week, to brainstorm, write down everything, small and big, from showering to getting that assignment started and finished. Yeah, the resulting list will be hella longer than what you’ll probably get done in a day, but just the feeling of off-loading your brain would be worth it, and you’ll be set on your way to completing all that in part 2.

Now part 2, or the “structure and refine“ part, will actually make the projects possible to do. Nothing is too big to tackle if you handle it the right way, and as Archimedes said:

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.“

When you follow along with my process, you’ll be at a place where you don’t spend too much time buffering in between tasks, and you’ll potentially achieve a greater sense of flow. ( -> this is a book I haven’t read, but I’ve heard great things about, and it basically introduces the idea of optimal working experience)

So, to the main course:

Step 1: Chronology first, priority second

That’s the gist of the tip - the order in which you do your tasks matters a lot! For me, it just makes sense, cause otherwise you just cherry-pick the more fun (or “less boring“) tasks to do first, which is fine and all, until you’re left with the heaviest tasks at the end of the day.

In order to prevent it, I like to use the knowledge of my own behavioural patterns. I know that I have more energy in the morning, so it makes sense to start with the university work in the morning, and do art commissions later in the day, where less cognitive power is needed. The late afternoon/early evening is also good for a workout, cause it’s just the right time between the morning clarity and the evening serendipity. Not only will this help you follow along with more discipline, but it will also be a pseudo-schedule, which will help you predict your most productive and least productive periods as well.

The second half of this step is to order by priority. Yeah, I can say that drawing my daily post is 1st priority, just like my uni work which is 1st priority, and working out is 1st priority, and so on and so on… While we can theoretically say that they are all important, as they are, this won’t get us far, as we’ll still default to doing the least hard task. So, order them by priority, for real, and think of it this way, “What is the thing which would bring the worst consequences if you kept on neglecting?“

Step 2: Make the subtasks manageable, imaginable

It may seem obvious, and I’ve said it numerous times before, but writing “Do that essay“ in your to-do list won’t make it easy to tackle, at all. You need to be much more imaginative with the visualisation process before you start a task. I didn’t really imagine myself sitting down and writing this blog post in one go, so I divided it into subtasks, like, brainstorm ideas, make the page on the website, write part 1, part 2, and it’s done. It may seem like bonus work, but believe me, it will save you so much time wasted on gathering the power to do a heavy task in the end.

The better you can imagine yourself acting on any task, the higher your chances of actually doing it. Law of attraction, as they call it, you attract what you think about. But more simply said, the less mental resistance, the more efficient you are.

Step 3: Prep for the fight!

Because it is a fight! You get up and you find yourself against a list of enemies, small and big bosses that have the upper hand. That is, if you come unprepared.

The battle with your to-do list actually starts the previous night, when you manage to cast a number of spells on yourself to get fight-ready. And the list of status boosters isn’t even that long, yet if you do all those, a successful day is much more likely to happen:

Get a good night’s sleep (I don’t manage too often, but it feels bad when you cut your sleep too short for too long)

Manage to start your morning without your phone in hand

Have your to-do list organised the day before

Get your shortcuts ready! By this I mean, reduce the buffer between you and the successful day - get your outfit ready beforehand, clear the sink before you go to bed, you get my point.

Also, if you wonder where all the video game comparisons come from, check this article on the “Gamify your Life“ topic.

Step 4: Observe yourself!

You are the person with the most insight into your own behaviour, on your patterns. You know when you get tired, whether coffee gets you more energised or more tired, when you naturally start feeling sleepy, and so on. Especially after several quarantines already, we all know what it’s like to live the same day again and again, so you might as well start taking notes.

Once you have the full picture, you’ll be much more prepared to order your to-do list in such a way that it resonates with your natural rhythm, instead of clashing with it.

Cheers, and stay awesome!