By Karen Leland
Open items are those tasks, to-do’s, projects, goals, ideas and actions (business or personal) that you need or want to do, but have not yet done. They may tug at you to get done today, or be as far off in the future as retirement. The trick is to gather them together by writing them down so that you don’t have to waste valuable mental real estate trying to keep track of them.
Think of your brain as a computer hard drive – it can only hold so much memory. When a hard drive reaches it’s capacity, it starts to slow down and wonky things happen. By capturing your open items on a list your brain is freed up to focus on what’s in front of you right now.
Just taking the time to capture all the open items in your life and write them down can dramatically improve your ability to focus and get things done. You can do this all in one sitting (in which case you will need at least a day) or in short spurts. To drain your brain do the following:
Go through all your physical spaces at work and home. Look through your desk drawers, desktop, in-basket, closets, cupboards, shelves and file drawers and make a master to-do list of anything that needs to be done based on what you see. For example: As you look in your file drawer do you: Need to clean out last years financial file and store the receipts, make file folder labels for the most recently added documents, follow up with a potential client, whose business card you found stuck in one of the folders.
Go through your electronic spaces. Look through your email in-box, PDA and voicemail messages and add any action items to the existing master to-do list that you are not going to handle immediately and are not recorded elsewhere. For example: An email from a colleague requesting you make a few changes to a report you wrote, a voice message from your brother about possible dates for a family reunion, an email from the professional association of crawfish-catchers announcing their annual crab feed fund raiser.
Go through your own brain. Look through your own mind and using the source list above write down any relevant to-do items. Once you have done this final emptying out, you can keep this system squeaky clean by adding to your master to-do list anything that pops into your head.
Hot Hint: Some people prefer to keep a master list of all these various and sundry to-do’s and transfer them to a daily or weekly to-do list as needed. Others prefer a detailed breakdown of the master list into more defined categories.
Please note that this article is excerpted from the book Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day and is copyrighted by Karen Leland and Keith Bailey. If you would like to reprint it on your blog or website you are welcome to do so, provided you give credit and a live link back to www.scgtraining.com
To buy the book go to: http://www.quality-service.com/timemanagementinaninstant
Karen Leland and Keith Bailey are the bestselling authors of six books including Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day. They are the co-founders of Sterling Consulting Group, which helps organizations and individuals learn how to fight distraction and find their focus in a wired world. For more information please contact: kleland@scgtraining.com
