If your coworkers constantly ask you questions, this article is for you. If you are given tasks that need to be completed, while the phone calls are constantly interrupting your conversation, this one is also for you. If your to-do lists keep growing until you decide to throw them in the trash, you should read this and start working in a different way.
Laura Stack is a productivity and performance expert, keynote speaker and bestselling author. In her bestselling book “What to do when there’s too much to do” Stack helps overworked workers work more efficiently.
According to Stack, the trick is in the checklists. Using checklists can save you about 90 minutes a day. This way, workers who have too many tasks to complete can become more productive at work and more focused on household chores. Instead of having a single checklist of things you have to do, try making three different lists that will point you in the right direction.
The first one is the list of things you shouldn’t do.
Do you gossip a lot while at work? Do you surf the Internet too much? Probably more than necessary. These are the reasons why you should make a list of things you shouldn’t do. Here should be listed things you should refuse to do, or the so-called “unnecessary things that waste your time”.
The purpose of this list is to focus on the tasks that you need to complete. Be precise with the tasks listed on this list. Don’t write “I will not surf the Internet at all today”. It is better to write “I will surf the Internet less and less each day”. Stick to this list and you will become more efficient in a short time and you will reduce the number of unimportant tasks completed.
The second one is the urgent list.
The urgent list contains tasks that must be completed as soon as possible. This list will teach you how to manage your time and we all know that time is essential. There is no certain number of tasks that can be listed on this list.
A web designer may have 15 tasks on the urgent list, but only 5 of them will be completed in a day. An author may have only one task, but it may take a couple of days to complete it. During the workday, there is a possibility of increasing the number of tasks that need to be completed immediately, so the urgent list is flexible.
The third list is to-do list.
All the tasks that need to be completed within a certain period of time, but not immediately, are listed here. To-do list contains tasks that will change their order, depending on the deadlines. Some of these tasks will move to the urgent list and some will be deleted.
Deciding whether a task should be on to-do list or on the urgent list can be hard, so you better ask yourself if the task must be completed today. If the answer is no, the task stays on to-do list, but if the answer is yes, the task goes to the urgent list.
