To-Do Lists Can Do You Good

Time is a valuable resource that more and more people complain not to have these days.
It is sad to see how much time most of us spend on irrelevant activities, instead of enjoying our lives. In order for us to have more time on our hands, we should better organize ourselves.

You probably have a lot of activities to perform each day of the week. Nowadays, a lot of people have personal "to-do" lists, lists in which they include all the activities they have to do that day or week. It depends on how long you want to make that list and how many things you want to do in the next period of time. Thus, you can make "to-do" lists for a few hours, days or even weeks. This also depends on how well organized people are. Still, you have to be careful not to become too well organized. After all, you do not want to have your whole life planed, don’t you?

People use "to-do" lists in order not to forget things that they should do within a period of time. This kind of list is probably good because it can help you remember your schedule. In order to make this list even more efficient, you have to group similar activities together, and take care of them during a certain period of time. So, you should group together easy tasks like returning phone calls, sending emails, surfing the web or writing checks.

Also, when you are at a specific location try to get the most of it and try to do a lot of your activities there. For example, when you are in a supermarket, try to buy all the things you need from there. Instead of going to all several other shops to buy products, you could try to find all you need in just one place. This is an efficient way to do shopping.

The Dangers of Over Scheduling

It is true that writing things down will make it easier for you to remember what you have to do. And if you no longer need to strain your memory, that enables your mind to use more of its processing capacity for the actual carrying out of the tasks you have assumed or have been assigned. At a closer look, however, this view on daily planners and schedulers will prove a simplistic one.

Such tools should also help you make a clearer distinction between different activities and organize your assignments hierarchically, according to their importance and degree of urgency. When you plan your day or week with too many tasks and too detailed time frames, you fall into the risk of not accomplishing anything. By means of selection, however, you can identify those tasks that absolutely need to be completed and allot a time slot for them. Breaks should be planned too, as no one can go on working nonstop -- not without their efficiency being affected, anyway. Breaks not only serve as periods of relaxation, but can also be a valuable source of extra minutes if any of the activities should extend beyond the time slot assigned to them.

Of course, this approach to planning will result in a much less cluttered schedule. Consequently, some of the tasks you were initially going to perform on a particular day might be postponed. However, if you look at it realistically, you will realize that they would have gotten postponed anyway, because the time needed for the must-do’s would not have allowed you to dedicate too much attention to those minor tasks.

Once you get used to this selective planning, you will notice an increase in both your productivity and your relaxation. Instead of being postponed a few times before actual completion, tasks will be more realistically placed in your schedule. On the whole, your daily plan will look a lot friendlier and you will be free from the stress of over scheduling.