Making a to do list

By Catalogs Editorial Staff

Making a to do list with either paper and electronic tools ensures productivity

In today’s times, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed with work and family responsibilities. Sometimes the calendar or work pad just doesn’t cut it and we find ourselves forgetting some of the most important tasks for our day. To become organized, prioritized, focused, reliable, and less stressed, we need a little order to our lives.

Thankfully, there a multitude of ways for us to achieve this, from the old school paper-based methods of our parents’ lists to the new-fangled ways of online templates and programs and applications which are available to help you in making a to do list. Think about how your parents used to write items down on a piece of paper in order to meet deadlines, set priorities, and not miss important events. How times have changed, as we can now use computers, iPhones, and the like to create calendars and make sure tasks are completed on time.

How To Structure Your Lists

It’s important to first understand the tasks you have in front of you. Simply write them down, in terms of higher priority tasks coming first, mid-level coming next, and so on. For larger projects, you can even break them down further into their component parts, with specific actions that need to be accomplished written out.
~

Work through each of your tasks for the day in a steady fashion, whether you’ve compiled it for work or the weekend’s family activities. These written tasks are a way to stay on point, motivate you toward completing them, and keep yourself organized. If you are visual, transfering tasks to a shared planner or a wall calendar will help you create a workable strategy for completing items on your to-do list in an organized manner.

These compiled pages can be a great way in which to improve work load, show that you can handle a diverse set of tasks, as well as lower stress in an office and/or home setting. Through this focus, one will spend more time on higher value tasks. Overall, this means you will hopefully be more productive and more valuable to your work team and/or family team.

Much of the above mentioned items are common sense, so let’s move on to different ways in which you may actually create items which help you manage your tasks.

Electronic Helpers

In today’s technology run world we find ourselves, making a to do list can actually be done through electronic means. The old standby of writing things down on a piece of paper or notepad is so early 2000s. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and certain versions of Microsoft Outlook can offer users ways in which to organize their goals for the day/week/month/year.

Users may go online to find resources like Remember the Milk in order to help them compile tasks. This online variation will offer ways in which to sync up with your smartphone, PDA, or email account. As well, it can provide high tech information such as where your tasks are in relation to a city map. Similar services to Remember the Milk include Toodledo, Ta-Da Lists, Todoist, and more.

There are even applications for your iPhone that making creating tasks for completion a cinch. Many of these programs will allow you so much more than if you were just writing out your goals on a piece of paper. There are email alarms, priority levels, different types of topic creation, and more.

You won’t be forgetting any of your important items thanks to the unique and creative features found within many of these apps and programs. You can update your goals easily without having to erase or create a whole new page, as you would have with a paper-based sheet. But then again, the old paper standby has worked for many previous generations. So, it’s up to you on how you want to make forgetting tasks a thing of the past.

Resources:

iPhone AppStorm: 25 Fantastic To-Do List Apps for iPhone.

Mind Tools: To Do Lists.

Above photo attributed to ironybelle