Getting Things Done - To Do Lists

It's easy to take each day as it comes - to react to everything - incoming emails and phone calls, followed up with a vague idea of what you plan to do that day. Quite often though, the day runs away from you - and you feel like nothing's been done, or not as much as you'd like to have done. While it's good to remove distractions from your working day (as mentioned in my previous Getting Things Done article), it's good to know exactly what tasks you have planned for the up-and-coming day.

To Do lists can help you plan your day a lot better. It sounds like more work in a sense, because you probably think that you already know what you need to do tomorrow. However, a To Do list that's categorised by things like :-

• Marketing / Promotion
• Client Work
• Phone Calls / Emails
• Business Development

...can help you not only categorise tasks, but also make sure you don't neglect any areas of your business - by reminding you that you really should be working on each category - even if it's one small task a day for those categories you may usually neglect (marketing / promotion, business development). To Do lists also force you to really plan the next day ahead - and fill it out with tasks. It can start out quite mechanical, but after a while a To Do list will not only get you more productive, but also act as reminder of tasks that should be done today.

You don't have to use a boring pen and paper - there's lots of online free To Do list tools:-

www.rememberthemilk.com
www.toodledo.com
www.wunderlist.com