Personal Time Management 6A - Managing a To-Do List

Managing a to-do list requires practice. If you regularly use to-do lists you may pick up a few tips from this post but you will probably save time by skipping or speed-reading it. Non-useres or casual users should get something from the points given below.

To-do Lists: The following eight points are in effect habits for managing you daily to-do lists:

1. Begin the list for a particular future day as soon as a "happening" is known and "diaried";
2. Think about and finalise the next day's to-do list in the evening before and check it after a night's sleep;
3. Keep the number of to-do's on the day reasonably do-able in the day (See 1);
4. Note the to-do's as must-do's/ should-do's/ possible-do's, ie have an A-list/ B-list/ C-list;
5. Divide any large to-do into a number of smaller ones;
6. Spread very large to-do's over several days/months... etc;
7. Build into every daily to-do list a bit of slack;
8. Cluster like activities, eg correspondence/ filing/ telephoning.

Storage of Lists: Keep a loose-leaf folder for all future days' daily to-do lists (See 1).

Filing: For the correspondence each day collect the file into any files used but otherwise collect and put in order any papers to be filed later (as a to-do), ie do filing at say, the end of the week (See 8).

Diary: My diary acts as an annual to-do listing (See 1) and has a page for a caution list covering next year and subsequent years. Make an entry in the diary as a reminder that to-do's for this year's events to flag-up a warning a month/ week / few days in advance; thus the diary also acts as a caution listing over time. [Tip 1 Regularly look-at or scan your diary a week to a month in advance.]

Telephoning: Have a telephone pad for notes you wish to keep as a record of any conversations. Pad might show: a) person's telephone number, b) date, c) time, d) important points, e) future action and when. [Tip 2]

See PTM 6B for Complete To-do Lists