Time Management Training: The Lowly To Do List a Powerful and Often Forgotten Tool
Even though To Do Lists are mentioned in many time management training programs it seems they are either overlooked or made more complicated, and time consuming than they need to be. To get the most value from your to do list you want to identify and segregate the different types of tasks, you want to have a way to easily track results, and you only want to spend about 10 minutes once a week on your to do list. You can spend 5 minutes to develop an electronic version of your to do list that you can either print, or use in its electronic state that will serve you for years.
You have recurring weekly activities/tasks that you have to do no matter what. A really easy way to develop and organize your to do list is to make two tables in a Word document formatted for landscape and two columns on the page. In the left column have a “To Do” table with two columns in the table. In one column of your “To Do” table enter the activities/tasks that you have to do each week.
Good time management demands that you handle your immediately actionable activities. Record all the specific activities or steps or actions that you need to take this week in the other column of your “To Do” table. This keeps you from forgetting important steps and allows to you check off each activity as it’s done.
You also have what I call place holder activities and ideas. These are activities that don’t have to be done this week, but that you want to do some time, so you need a place to write them down so you can do them when the time is right. This is also true for ideas. It may even be a running list of books you want to buy. A could place to put these items in on your second table with two columns labeled “Phone Calls” and “Results”. These place holder items fit nicely on the bottom half of this table in either column.
Tracking and measuring is critical if you are in sales, or you’re a business owner. This second table has had a tremendous impact for me personally and my clients. Under the phone calls column you enter the names and phone numbers or even email addresses of people that you need to call or email this week. As you make those calls you record the results of each call or email in the results column. In the results column you have the things that are important to track and measure on a weekly basis like: number of appointments made, number of appointments held, number of sales advances, number of sales, amount of revenue generated from sales, and the results of your marketing activities. This organizes all your important numbers in one place where you can see at a glance exactly how your week is progressing.
The lowly To Do list is a powerful time management training tool. Because you are only spending no more than 10 minutes once a week to develop it, and you re-prioritize it at the end of each day based on the things that you’ve accomplished that day, it’s a working document that allows you to know exactly where you stand with each type of activity. It keeps you from forgetting or overlooking important tasks, and it frees your mind from trying to hold all that information in your head.
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