Fact: we all have busy lives. Try and recall the last time you ever just sat there and said, I have nothing to do. There is this constant running list of items we keep in our head from the document at work, buying that new pair of pants or killing that spider who has been quietly setting up shop in your bathroom corner for weeks. Without keeping organized, things fall through and don’t get done. So here is my completely non-revolutionary way of making sure I get all my shit done and don’t waste my time worrying about what I have to do at any given moment.
Enter: The List
Lists are the glorious engine behind this (revolutionary?.. certainly not). Now there are a million different ways to make lists, even entire books on the best list for your life. You are here to learn about my way to list zen, so here we go.
Group Everything
First of all, I use the wonderful and completely free TO DO list maker, wunderlist. This bad boy runs on windows, macs, all your mobile devices, tablets, and then syncs itself between them all for good measure. All that for the hard to beat price of zero. I make list categories for all the big areas of my life: personal, work, projects, ideas, purchase, and bills. Nice to know I can break my entire life down into 6 simple categories. This list is the basic level of everything that I ever have to remember and should apply for 95% of you.
Optimize Your Lists
When something comes to mind, all that I have to do is I write it down; computer, phone, anyway I can, I get it in. With wunderlist, I will usually assign it a due date so that I know it will get done eventually and don’t have to keep a separate life calendar for items.
In the morning, I switch to my today view so I know what I have to get done immediately and then switch to the 7 day outlook for knowing what is coming. Some days I knock off 10 things, others none. It doesn’t really matter because I know everything that needs to be done is in front of me and things that have due dates, will come up when they need to.
When you have a spare moment, you can check your list and see if there is anything to get done. If you are lucky and have nothing then just sit back and browse the web looking for funny cat pictures (or maybe that is a recurring item on your list).
Important: Every couple of weeks I will do a purge of items across all of my list categories. Maybe I don’t want to purchase that $100,000 razor anymore or an idea has become obsolete. Regardless, these reviews are good to get a good scope of everything I have to do to have a mental picture of my life.
So do you have a list yet? This should help convince you if you are the stubborn type:
Benefits To The list
- I don’t ever have to think about remembering anything beyond the minute to write it on the list.
- Everything is in one convenient place for me to see what I have to do.
- There is incredible satisfaction in crossing things off a list once it is done. You don’t know this feeling until you try it. Make a list now and give it a try.
- I get more things done because, otherwise idle time is used to go through list items.
De-clutter your life and go get more things done.
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Great post, I’m definitely going to give Wunderlist a try. My issue with list-making is that when I initially begin, I feel the need to fill it up and I end up making separate to-dos for daily events like “workout” or “class.” Then the list gets cluttered, and becomes useless.
How do you determine whether something is ingrained enough into your daily routine so that you don’t need to list it?
Items like workout, class, meetings, appointments etc don’t make it onto the list. They just go directly into an actual calendar because those items have fixed times they need to be done at.
Items that are smaller and don’t need to be fit into a fixed amount of time, make it into the list. Hope that makes sense.
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