Are To-Do Lists Hindering Your Productivity?
I’ve gone over this before where task lists are important. However, they need to be reaching towards an overall goal. If you’re finding yourself creating long to-do lists and not tasks that reach a goal, you’re not productive, just busy.
Setting goals is easy. Reaching them is hard and takes work. There is a saying that goes on and says, “Being busy is hard. Being successful is hard. Choose your hard.” Or something along those lines. It also says quite a few other things in that vein, but you get the point.
Tasks are things that we set for ourselves every day; this is something we all know because we all do them. To-do lists, the bane of our existence, something that has to exist to make sure that we get everything done. But is it just a list of things-to-do daily, or is it a list of things to do that will move you towards an overarching goal?
For example, let's say that you want to improve your words per day count by 50% over the next quarter (this is one of my goals for this upcoming quarter). That’s your overarching goal and something that you can’t necessarily control. Usually, goals with numbers aren’t something that you can completely control, and that’s why it’s a goal.
Projects come next, breaking down those goals into smaller hills from that mountain. I want to improve my writing? Okay — every day, I will sit down and dedicate the hours of 5 am — 9 am to writing, researching, and doing whatever needs to be done to reach that goal.
Then we break these projects down into tasks. Here are our lists—tasks comprising smaller molehills that move us towards that project and the project towards the goal. A task for this would be to write for medium 3–4 times a week, write for clients 3–4 times a week to meet deadlines, and write in my book as much as possible.
To-do lists that aren’t focused and are more geared towards just being busy (say with household chores) are great, and they need to be done; however, that said, these are more lists that are on the side and in the peripheral of your priorities and your dream life. Folding laundry will not improve your ideal life and get you to that desired outcome of improving your writing game if that’s your goal.
When focusing on goals, projects, and tasks, we need to consider realistic time frames. Setting a goal for yourself to say, earn 5k a month over the next quarter, is a lofty goal for most. So setting maybe goals such as earning 1k/3k/5k as a good/great/fantastic is an excellent way to reach for them. That way, you can strive to meet that 5k goal, but if you fall short, you’ve still met a goal that matters to you, and you see it as an achievement.
Another goal for me is to, in this next quarter, to finish and publish my book. I don’t expect to make money off of it in the first quarter, and that's a goal that I’m saving for the second quarter. So for right now, it’s not a focus, not a worry, and one less thing on my plate to look at, focusing only on the next 90 days. Breaking this down into smaller pieces was hard for me to do with many ideas in mind, goals, projects, and tasks, but some soul searching and a bit of research honed them down and gave me perspective.
I also sat down and realistically plotted out my time. I took a calendar, a suggestion from a recent course I took and marked off all days in the year that I wouldn’t be writing or working on anything at all. That meant all weekends were off the board, as those are reserved for chores and spending time with my husband. Then there was marking off time for my day job, marking off birthdays, holidays, and any other days that I thought I might not be writing.
That left me with 180 days out of the year to write. 180 days. That doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re looking at the fact that there are 365 in a year. But when you look at hours per week and realistically plan, it gives you a good perspective of just what you can reach for and achieve without becoming overwhelmed.
This is where tasks can hinder you if you’re not careful. Putting too many tasks on your list, or becoming distracted at the moment by things such as emails coming in one by one, social media, or other distractions, will take you away from focusing on your goal. Therefore I write from 5 am-9 am in the mornings as my family isn’t awake yet, and I have quiet time to sit, focus, and write.
My task lists consist of goal-oriented tasks and a few personal tasks, but mostly, goal-oriented tasks are the ones I focus on so that each quarter I’ve reached at least one out of the 2–3 that I’ve set for myself.
If you’re creating busy lists and not outcome goal related task lists, it’s probably a good idea to sit down, download, or buy a goal planner and fill it out. You may feel silly at first, but these will usually make you really think about what your goals are, and you’ll likely do a bit of soul searching.
Either way, tasks are a great way to get things done, as long as you’re on track to get things done in a meaningful way with intentional outcomes in mind.
