Effective To Do Lists - Make Your To Do Lists Work For You!

I'm one of the biggest list makers you will ever meet. A lot of the time I even make lists within lists (borderline crazy) but it really works for me so I wanted to share with you my tips on how to create effective to-do lists. 

It may seem trivial to even talk about but it's necessary in this busy lifestyle where we are juggling work, relationships, goals, family, friends, our health, fitness and life in general. Without to-do lists it's likely we will forget things we need to do or not organise them in a logical way where they all get done in a time efficient manner. 

Keeping your thoughts organised and staying on track to complete all of the tasks you need is a good habit to practice and there are plenty of ways to make it easier. 

Here are all the to-do list hacks I've found work for me and little tips and tricks I think might help you better organise your tasks in a way that they will all be completed. 

Categorize 

What I find most useful is having seperate lists for each category and splitting up everything I need to do by; work, university, appointments, health and fitness, errands etc. It might seem overwhelming to now have more than 5 'to-do' lists but it makes things easier to keep track of and organise in your mind. You can also see where you need to put more time into. As an example say you have 9 outstanding things on your 'university' to-do list and only 3 errands to run. It makes it obvious what is of importance to work on at that time and where you should be focussing your energy. It also feels really good to have an empty to do list in a couple of categories rather than an endless on-going general list. 

Prioritise

Within each category, organise the tasks in order of importance and work your way through them. Putting them in an order of completion gives you a clear game plan on how to complete all the tasks. Also when you are ordering them you can start to chunk tasks together when you know you will be in the right mind-frame to tackle them. An example of this is scheduling your errands by area of your city that way you have a time efficient method to getting everything you need done in a logical order. Or if you have paperwork to do and a University assignment, scheduling them together because you know you will be sitting in your office and already set up. 

Set Deadlines

Often times tasks already have deadlines but there are ones that might not already including; visit my mum, book dentist appointment or clear out wardrobe and give clothes to lifeline. Give yourself a timeframe to complete these so that you feel some sort of urgency to get them done otherwise if you're anything like me, you will put them off forever. 

Book Appointments 

Setting appointments in your calendar means that you will work your to-do lists around these. It provides some sort of structure where you are already getting something done like the dentist, a massage or a car service. This way you have chunks of time to work with around these appointments or you can schedule appointments around each other and hop from one to another to really increase productivity. 

Some of these might sound obvious but I wanted to point them out anyway in case you reading are quite new to organisation and it's a 2018 goal of yours. A side note is that I use the lists app in my phone and is syncs to my computer so that's the best method I have found in keeping on top of everything. I hope these tips have helped in some way!