Ok so this week I found a blog that was fairly insightful to
me. It was on tackling a to do list. I find that I have a hard time at this and
I think it is partly because my mind wanders around and I get an idea or
thought and next thing I know I am off to the races on something completely
different than what I was just doing. So this guy talks about 8 strategies to
help getting your list done and I think I am going to try and put this into
practice.
1 Priority
The idea is this, the whole list is not a
priority and just doing the things on the list and marking them as done does
not necessarily determine your progress, focus on priorities.
2 No second thoughts
Do not overthink things or starting your
project. Jump right in and get it going. This is by far one of my not so good
qualities, I tend to overthink everything and make it far more difficult than
it needs to be.
3 Limit distractions
This is another biggie for me as I can
easily get sidetracked. Focus on the task at hand. Whatever that something is
that is distracting you now can be taken care of later.
4 Learn from mistakes
I am a proponent of this and I think it is
key no matter what environment. Mistakes are unavoidable, it’s what you do with
them or about them that counts. Learn from them and move on.
5 Set a short-term goal
Making a goal helps to force us to get
things done.
6 Break big activities into small pieces
Do not overwhelm yourself because of the
size of the task, big problems are best solved by breaking them down into
smaller, easier manageable tasks.
7 Fire the perfectionist
Do not demand perfection because rarely if
ever is it going to be or ever will be perfect. He quotes Voltaire who warned
against letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. You will never make a
perfect decision.
8 Think about it
Very important. Replace counterproductive
thoughts with positive ones that help motivate and keep you on track.
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