Not-to-do List and Templates

• A To-Do list is composed of your routine activities that continue to come up daily.
• A Might-Do list is composed of the things you might do someday, things that are your goals and you will, in the course of time, schedule them in your calendar.

The important, big things can be 'baked-in' your calendar, while you keep track of meetings and appointments.

The Might-Do list acts as your goals list that you will incorporate in your coming days while doing your routine work.

• Look at everything on your to-do list and ask yourself, ‘Am I the only person who can do this?’
• Anything that can be given to someone else should be put on an outsource list.
•  While outsourcing takes the extra time upfront to train someone else on the task, it saves you time later, which can be used to focus on the things you do have to do. 

Even if you think it’s too big of a dream but it’s something you want, write it down anyway. 

When you write something down, studies say you’ll be 33% more likely to do it because it sets an intention and puts a goal into motion.

Choose three Most Important Tasks for each day, and focus completely on gettting them done within a specific time.

If you add more than three, and you might not get them all done. By limiting yourself to a small number of things, you force yourself to focus only on the essential.

Instead of following a to-do list, make a shorter one called "success list". Why make one?

• It aims you in a specific direction
• It is an organized directive.

If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.

Aspirational tasks, like writing a book, don’t belong on a to-do list; instead, create a separate bucket list. 

Daily to-do lists should be focused. If you have a big project you want to complete, you can put it on your to-do list if you chunk it out into smaller, more attainable tasks.

• Most people are unaware of their priorities. Our priorities are the things that are most important to us right now. Not serving them is non-negotiable.

• People are capable of having two or three priorities. More priorities leave them scattered and unfulfilled, filling their time with stuff that doesn't matter.

• Once you know your priorities, everything on your to-do list should serve them. Look out for the 'shoulds' - they are not serving your priorities.

Look over your to-do list and assign every task a value, such as a dollar-per-hour amount that you might have to pay someone else to do it. Score tasks from $10 per hour for administrative tasks up to $10,000 per hour for high-level strategy and sales-related tasks.

By giving dollar-per-hour values to specific tasks, you ensure you use your resources correctly.

• Collect: Get ideas and to-dos out of your brain and onto a list.
• Process: Review your list daily and decide how to act on each item.
• Plan: Pick a few high priority items to accomplish each week and every day.
• Do: Schedule time to accomplish your selected to-dos without interruptions.

To clear your mind and improve focus, get your ideas and to-dos out of your mind and onto a list. 

Documenting to-dos in the moment lessens the likelihood that you'll forget to do something and gives you a master list of to-dos to reference when you're trying to decide where to direct your time.

Productivity is directly related to your energy level.

Find your most productive hours — the time of your peak energy — and schedule Deep Work for those periods. Do low-value and low-energy tasks (also known as shallow work), such as responding to emails or unimportant meetings, in between those hours.

Before going to bed, spend 5 minutes writing your to-do list for the next day. These tasks should help you move towards your professional and personal goals.

You’ll be better prepared mentally for the challenges ahead before waking up and there won’t be any room for procrastination in the morning. As a result, you’ll work faster and smoother than ever before.

Start by taking a bird’s eye view of your life and slowly nail down more specific goals.

Identify your big goal. Then get more granular and identify specific goals along the way.

Each goal you set should be S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

• Specific: The more specific your goals are, the better chance you have of achieving them.
• Measurable: Can you identify milestones to hit along your way to success?
• Attainable: Are you willing and able to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve your goal?
• Relevant: A goal that you care about.
• Timely: Make sure every goal you set is time-bound.

• Create three columns on a board where you can use magnets or post-it notes. Label the columns: Options, Doing, and Done.
• Write your individual tasks down on separate cards. Post all of these cards in the "Options" column.
• From that column, choose no more than three to move into the middle "Doing" column. This is your work in progress.
• When a task is complete, move it into the "Done" column, and choose a new option to pull into "Doing."

Starting but not completing too many projects puts people at risk of the Zeigarnik effect, which states that people are better at remembering unfinished tasks than completed ones.