The TRUTH about TO-DO Lists

To-do lists are a great way to organize your tasks and goals. They can help you prioritize what is important, track your progress, and stay focused on your desired outcomes.?But are they the best way for you to be productive? Everyone is different. Although very popular, they do not work for everyone.

We all want to be as effective and efficient with our time as possible. We create lists to help maintain and recall the things that need to be done. But they also tend to restrict our thinking to the items on our lists and we may not see other opportunities or possibilities. They structure our thinking, focusing our attention primarily on the items on our lists.

The basic concept of a To-Do list is that it organizes our work around goals through identifying specific strategies we need to complete to move us forward toward our objectives. This may take days, or weeks, or even months to complete. Timelines can be attached but they depend upon “no-hitch” completion.

What works for you?? How do you plan your work and show your completion? There are various aps and computer programs that are applied. Everyone has a method that works for a while and then is replaced by something else.

Why are there so many apps and methods for something easily done with sticky notes or any other scrap of paper? Because managing tasks is an intensely—even irrationally—personal thing. People will reject anything that doesn't?feel?right. That does not work for them.

The TRUTH is that we get so hung up on labels and procedures, methods and means, that we fail in consistency.? You don’t have to be great, or smart, or anything special to be consistent. You just must show up and continue to do something consistently.

I wrote in the past about some thoughts by Dr. John Maxwell , author, and speaker. He presented what he called the “Rule of Five.” ?His simple illustration of cutting down a tree in your backyard explained what he meant. ?Every day you go into your backyard and take five swipes at the tree with an axe. ?If you do this every day, what is likely to happen? ?The tree will fall. ?There are, of cours e, a few conditions of this; you must use an axe, you must use a certain amount of force, and your strike must be consistently placed in roughly the same spot. ?This action is both intentional and consistent and it results in the intended action or result.

To-Do lists by themselves do not provide consistency, or even clarity to our objectives. Focused attention consistently applied over time creates progress, efficiency, and effectiveness.