10 Time, Task + Energy Management Strategies to Manage a Long To Do List
The following 10 strategies will help you to organize and manage your to do list so that you are optimizing your work for time, task load and the amount of energy you have in a day!
Strategy #1: Schedule Tasks
As you evaluate your to do list, identify which tasks need to be completed at or by a certain time and make sure you have clearly set aside that time for them. It’s not necessarily more productive to schedule all of your tasks for specific time frames, but it is important to do when due dates are involved with a task. For any work that needs to be done at a specific time (ex. meeting) what is the prep work you need to do in order to be ready at that time? Also schedule that work in ahead of your scheduled task.
Strategy #2: ID + Block Time for Projects
If you are working off a long to do list for the day or week, ultimately some of those tasks will belong to the same project. So, identify those items first so you are clear that this is one of the main objectives you are working on, and you can also take a moment to ensure that you aren’t missing any important tasks that go along with this project as well. Then block off specific time to work on that project and those tasks together- this will ensure you can go deep on the project and do it well
Strategy #3: Set Your Top 3
Setting your daily Top 3 is a planning strategy I recommend to ensure you are prioritizing your work and key tasks. Which three tasks on your to do list are the most important to complete today? Things which, if they don’t get done, it will cause issues or delays. Clearly ID these three priority tasks and get them done as soon as possible in your day
Strategy #4: Use the 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule is a task management principle that explains how only 20% of our tasks lead to 80% of the results we get. This means that there are some tasks we can do each day that have a bigger impact than others, so to save ourselves time and energy, we should ID and complete those few key tasks before worrying about the 80% of tasks that have nominal effects on our results. Hopefully, your top 3 list is comprised of these tasks, but any additional can be listed out on your daily to do list to be completed as soon as possible as well
Strategy #5: Batch Your Tasks
Some tasks on your list will likely be very similar to each other and to optimize your workflow, it would be a good idea to batch these tasks, which means you work on them together at the same time so you are doing the same general activity over and over. Examples: Creating posts for social media, running reports, making phone calls. When batching your tasks, ask yourself if there are any other similar tasks you can add into this process, even if they aren’t on your list for the current day or week, you may be able to spend a little more time working on them now, and save yourself even more time in the future.
Strategy #6: 3D’s: Delegate, Defer + Delete
Remember, you are not responsible for doing all of the work on your to-do list! Which tasks can you delegate to someone else? Which can you defer for another time that might be more optimal for working on the task? Which tasks can you simply delete off your list because they aren’t a result driver?
Strategy #7: Manage Habits
Some of the tasks on your list may actually be habits you are working on, so don’t simply leave them on your to do list to be done whenever, pause and figure out where in your daily routine these habits make the most sense to be accomplished. When a habit sits on your to do list, it’s just another thing to do, but when you assign it to a place in your daily routine, it has a purpose in your life.
Strategy #8: Mindset Check
Our mindset is a major factor in determining how much work we are able to act on each day and how productive our day ends up becoming. So, ask yourself, which tasks on your list will you feel much better once they are accomplished? These tasks may be things we should consider prioritizing because often doing a difficult thing first gives us mental relief and removed roadblocks to our productivity. Yes, you are going to have to do the things that intimidate you, but once you do them you will feel unstoppable!
Strategy #9: Energy Audit
Your personal energy level is going to be a major factor in how much work you can accomplish in a day, so check in with your energy level to understand which tasks you can reasonably expect to complete today. Also consider what time of day your energy is highest and lowest. It would be a good idea to schedule more energy intense activities during your peak energy times, and allow yourself to work on lower intensity work during times when you know your energy will be waining.
Strategy #10: Create Your Workflow
Once you have organized and evaluated your to do list according to the previous nine strategies, decide the most logical order for you to use to work on this list. This may mean that everything doesn’t get done today and you are intentionally moving tasks to the next day or another week, but all of this is part of creating a good plan that sets reasonable expectations and avoids creating overwhelm.
How to Use These Strategies
When it comes to creating a to-do list, I prefer to create lists for the month, and then choose items from that list to apply to my week. This prevents me from keeping too long of a list and it also helps to drill down to the context of my current months priorities. Once you have your monthly to do list, I recommend using the 10 strategies to filter the tasks you need to do for the current week and identify the tasks for you to do each day. If planning ahead for the week works for you, great! But if you find you set your task list for a day and then things don’t get done and need to be transferred to the next day, this becomes a problem if you have pre-planned your week. So, unless things are scheduled for a specific day on purpose, don’t feel the need to fill in every day of the week ahead of time.
Using these recommendations, you are going to start to see that you begin to plan more strategically and intentionally, and stop taking on too many tasks that aren’t necessary. The hard truth for most of us is that we put too many tasks on our list and then fail to prioritize them, so that we are always expecting not to get everything done and when we continue to push tasks off day after day, we accept it. But you can teach yourself to recognize priority tasks. You can learn how to block off time to do deep work. You can practice batching tasks and checking in with your mindset and energy to determine what is reasonable for you.
So give these strategies a try- understand that there is a learning curve with this, but the more you execute on these strategies the more you will integrate and utilize them.
Video: 10 Strategies to Manage a Long To-Do List
xoxo,
