Downsize Your To-Do List in 5 Easy Steps

Published by Mike Michalowicz (Google+)

To-Do List

By: Rory Cohen

You know you have way to many things on your to-do list. Here are some ways to down-size that list, and turn it into a powerful income generating tool at the same time.

Step One

Acknowledge that it is impossible to do it all. Decide right now that you are going to choose the Highest Leveraged Actions in the important areas of your life, and focus on doing those every day.

Step Two

Do a mind dump. Unfinished business weighs on your mind and drains your energy. Take 10 minutes and make a list everything that’s in your mind that needs to be done, in every area of your life, personal and professional. Just keep writing until without ordering or prioritizing until you can’t think of anything else. This is not a to-do list. This is a cleansing list. I do them periodically; just to be sure I’ve captured everything.

Step Three

At the end of each business day, make a down-sized to-do list of highest leveraged actions. I use a special card we designed where I can put 5 business items on one side and 5 personal on the other.

Highest leveraged actions for your business are the ones that will have the biggest impact your bottom line, however you define that. If you have way more than 5 each day, and they aren’t bottom-line oriented, then you need to think about delegating, but that’s a different blog post.

High leveraged personal actions are just as important as the business actions. These can include things like self-care (exercise, meditation), relationship (send a card, call your spouse), creativity (write a poem), and unfinished business (see Step Four). These things get lost in a huge to-do list, and end up never being attended to.

Step Four

Address one major unfinished business item each month. Pick one item from your mind dump, and put one leveraged action on your card each day until it’s done. Then pick the next project.

Step Five

“Enough” is a decision, not a thing. If you are clear on your vision, have balanced your priorities to include personal and business, and you are taking small, consistent actions each day and delegating the rest, you are doing the best you can. Act AS IF you’ve done enough, acknowledge yourself, give yourself time to rest and rejuvenate, and watch your results expand.

© Copyright 2009 Entelekey, Inc. All rights reserved.

Rory Cohen is known as the Idea Implementation Coach. Her company, Entelekey, Inc., produces Take 10, a system for implementing Big Ideas. Rory is an implementation faculty/coach for international seminar leaders like Steve Harrison and Alex Mandossian. She blogs on implementation issues for entrepreneur.com and serves as a frequent media guest on national TV and radio, such as the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine, SmartMoney Magazine, national public radio, to name a few. If you have a great idea inside of you that you haven’t taken action on, visit her at www.take10now.com to find out how you can move forward at lightening speed in just 10 minutes a day.


Category: The Right Actions
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  • http://gossipexposed.com/ Marc

    Thanks for the advice, I keep creating more and more lists as the work piles up.

  • http://learn4fun.blogspot.com Ruth

    I love the “mind dump” idea. That is the step that is most helpful to me. Without doing that, my mind is constantly wandering to all those things occupying space, and diverting my attention to the tasks that really need to be done.

  • http://www.wahmtalkradio.com/blog Angela Green

    I’m feeling overwhelmed with too many “good” ideas, and your post was perfect timing for me. Instead of floating aimlessly from project to project, now you have prompted me to focus, and acknowledge when I’m “done.”

  • http://www.chicgemsetc.com Sarah of Chic Gems

    Great post! I find lists streamline the day every time!

  • http://professional-organizer.com Ellen Delap

    Love the concept that enough is a decision, not a thing. No matter if you are a working or stay at home person, there is not enough time to do it all. This 5 step plan really gives you a strategy to work with. Happy organizing, Ellen

  • http://gsbusinessresources.wordpress.com Gladys

    Great timing on a great post! I was talking to a friend about to-do lists, then a couple of hours later this post appeared. Very helpful to me and I’m forwarding it to her as well.

  • http://www.ecstewart.com EC (Lisa) Stewart

    Great list! One to refer to and one to send out to many colleagues!!

    All the steps leading up to ‘Enough’ allow a person to satiate oneself at the self-prescribed ‘decision.’

    Now we just need a glass of wine to celebrate that end-of-day decision. ;)

  • http://www.cluttercoachblog.com Claire Tompkins

    Mind dumps are a great idea. Not only do you capture everything, but you have to clarify each item enough to write it down. Sometimes just putting into words those vague thoughts knocking around in your brain is enough either to show you what the next action is, or reveal to you that you don’t want or need to do it at all. And that’s always helpful!

  • http://www.take10now.com Rory Cohen

    Great to see all the comments. Glad the post served. and I love Lisa’s idea of the celebration! Followed that suggestion myself last night as I made a tomato goat cheese tarte for dinner!

  • http://blog.teamly.com/about Scott Allison

    Once you have your personal productivity in check the next step is to make sure your employees are focused and effective. Teamly, a new online teamwork management tool can help with both. Take the tour, or sign-up now at http://teamly.com

    I identified a need for Teamly due to the experience I had in my last business, where I had grown it from 1 employee to 10 employees over a number of years. The challenge I was having was how did I make sure they really delivered, and how could I keep track of commitments that were made to me.

    Teamly is a productivity and team management SaaS web app that helps make people more focused and effective, and businesses more successful. It makes users think about what is really important in their companies, commit to these priorities and then share these for review by their manager and team-mates. It combines priority and goal setting for the individual with real-time information on staff for managers.

    • http://www.ToiletPaperEntrepreneur.com Mike Michalowicz

      @Scott – Thanks.