Time Management: Your Daily To-Do List

Getting the right things done in your work day is so much easier when you know what you want to do and when you have the energy to do it. Let’s take a look at energy first.

Step 1. Maintain high positive energy while working

How do you do that? Keep going back to your WHY. What do you love about your business? What is that thing you love helping you attain? How does that thing you love make you feel?

The more you get in touch with that feeling, the better. Visualize it in different ways.
• Keep reminders around that show you the rewards of this.
• Post them in your office, on the bathroom mirror, on the refrigerator door, wherever you’ll see it regularly.
• Record yourself saying it.

Have fun with work. Can you make a game out of any of your tasks? Does singing and dancing make the time fly by? The more fun you have while working, the easier work will become.

Step 2. Avoid negative energy

Do not engage in negative self-talk!
• I really don’t know what I’m doing becomes How can I figure out what to do? Where can I get help?
• It’s silly to even try becomes I really want to achieve this goal and I am going to do my best.

Know what your major avoidance tactics are. Get tuned into when you’re doing them. That’s a great time to stop and ask yourself: What am I avoiding? Why? What actions can I take that would let me get started on this task? Is there a mindset shift I can make?

Stay in control of your most precious resource, YOUR time. If you find that you get sucked into email, web surfing, or long phone calls with your mother, make a conscious decision about when to do that and more importantly, when NOT to do that! I see people these days using Tim Ferriss’ strategy in The 4-Hour Work Week of only checking email twice a day and explicitly stating that in their email replies.

Step 3. Strategies for creating a to-do list, and for getting it done

Try a few different strategies, until you find one that really works for you. Currently, I’m using the MIT strategy below.
• Maintain reasonable to-do lists. Having a to-do list that you KNOW can never be done just bogs down your energy. Do not use a to-do list to memorialize every idea you’ve ever had.
• MIT=Most Important 3 Things. Keep a running to-do list of short and long-term items, and from that, at the end of each day, make a list of the top 3 to work on tomorrow. The next morning, you can hit the ground running.
• Don’t sleep til it’s done. Do not go to bed until the MIT are done.
• The point system. Assign points to different tasks and make sure you ea
50 or 100 points per week. For example, if making calls is important, give yourself 10 points for each call where you actually talk to someone. Give yourself 20 points if they take the next step (decide to become a hostess, move along the recruiting process, etc.).
• The gold star program. Make a list of the activities you want to accomplish every day and put a gold star sticker next to the ones you get done, just like in school. My friend who did this had a diverse set of tasks, including flossing her teeth, reading for 10 minutes a day, and having an orgasm.
• If a task takes less than 2 minutes, just do it now and skip putting it on the list.

Call to Action

Make conscious decisions about how you spend your time. Remember, at the end of our time, we don’t get a refund for the unused portion!