Summary – To-Do List equals Prioritize & Results
I’m sure everyone can agree that one of the best tools for productivity is the To-Do list. All productivity gurus recommend it. In fact, it is considered as the foundation of productivity by some. Generally, a To-Do list is a system in which you will list down all the tasks needed to be done. Once a task is completed, it will be written off from the list. It’s as simple as that.

However do you know that To-Do list can be further improved to maximize productivity? Here are 7 tricks I personally implement that you might find useful.

1) Write this sentence at the top of your To-Do list

“It is never about how many left, it is about how many accomplished”

How many times have you been so happy that you have completed a lot of the tasks listed, but by the time you are about to celebrate, another set of tasks occupy the list. If your focus everyday is to clear that list, you will be frustrated everyday.

That is why it is always better to focus on the number of tasks completed instead of number of tasks left on the list. Believe me, it will make a lot of difference in our motivation level once our perception on the concept of a To-Do list changed.

2) Keep a record (The Done List)

Based on the same philosophy, I would recommend you to keep a record of the tasks completed. Make another list if you can – The Done list. Any tasks you have written off from your To-Do list, put them in this list. This list will serve as a reminder to you that you can be productive if you want. It will also help boost that declining motivation almost immediately.

If motivation is not a problem to you, at least take pride in your work. You deserve it.

3) Set points and its corresponding rewards

This tip is actually one of my favorites. I put points to all my tasks on the To-Do list. The most urgent tasks will be given 10 points, while the less important ones will be given 5 points. The tasks which are not important are given 0 points. Yes, Zero. I will tell you why shortly.

I will then set a target and its corresponding rewards. For example, if I ever reached 5000 points, I will treat myself with a one day leave. Of course you can make this more interesting by allowing further accumulation of the points. It’s your rule.

The reason I give the least important task a zero is because I have experimented before by giving it 1 points. I end up avoiding doing all the urgent tasks and just focus on these trivia tasks. That itself is an example of a To-Do list went wrong.

4) Make it ugly

I have a friend who actually decorate her To-Do list. She actually writes with such beautiful handwriting on a beautiful piece of paper. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the kind of paper I used to write love letter on. But that’s another story. In the end, her To-Do list is not getting any shorter and she is more stressful than ever.

I have nothing against beautifully written work. But for a To-Do list, I would recommend you to write with your worst handwriting ever (Of course it must be readable too). The whole purpose of a To-Do list is to cross the items off. By making it ugly, you are subconciously pushing yourself to finish the tasks as soon as possible. Who would want to have an ugly written list unchanged for a year?

5) Use paper with lines

I once used a whiteboard as my To-Do list. It was a bad idea. Since there was no lines to separate the tasks, I often just squeezed the new task in between the existing tasks. By the end of the day, the whiteboard was filled with incomprehensible words.

Use paper with lines for your To-Do list. Nothing is more frustrating that a board full of tasks but you can’t read it.

6) Make the list short

Now that you are using paper with lines, why not limit your To-Do list further by having only 10 tasks on each paper. It is very tempting to have a very long list. But the truth is, a short list is better in term of efficiency and simplicity. Here are a few additional reasons why a short list is always better.

• Easy to scan through anytime.

• Highlight the most important task immediately.

• More satisfying when you write off a task.

• Having completed one paper of tasks will give you an extra boost of motivation.

• You are always eager to free up some space on your paper by completing the task.

A suggestion, go through your To-Do list and find tasks that can be delegated. Write that off. Now find other tasks that can just be eliminated. You should by now have reduced the length of your To-Do list by half. Congratulation!

7) Take three tasks out (Literally)

Remember your To-Do list with ten tasks? Now tear the top three tasks and immediately complete the tasks. Instead of crossing off tasks after you complete it, you are now doing it the other way around. If three tasks is too much, you can always choose just the one. It will help if the tasks torn are your most important tasks of the day.

There is only one rule to this technique. You must complete the task by all means. Once you allow yourself to procrastinate or rewrite the tasks again tomorrow, it will immediately become a habit. You don’t want that.

/end list

Conclusion

There are so many ways you can improve your To-Do list, but it will not work if you don’t understand the fundamental of a To-Do list. A To-Do list is meant to help you prioritize which tasks are more important. The list will also be useless if you avoid completing all the tasks.

- I Wonder -
Any other tricks you might want to share with the rest of the readers?

———– Personal Note ————-
My first computer got infected by virus almost monthly. I could put up with a virus that shows funny message once in a while, but this virus slowed my computer to a near halt. As a result, I formatted my computer every month. Fortunately, I had prepared a To-Do list on the steps to be taken immediately after a computer format. The list contained what softwares to install, what were the settings etc. Ah the good times.

Photo Credit – Purpleslog

Summary – Remember & Be Super Productive.

Pop quiz

There is a guy who loves productivity tips. He reads every single tips on all productivity blogs and half of the time he is one of the most productive person on the planet.

The question is – What happened to another half of his time?

Procrastination? Nah.. He must have memorized all the tricks to overcome procrastination. Fall sick? Maybe but nobody can be productive when they are sick, so that excuse is acceptable.

The Real Answer

He simply forgets to be productive.

You may not notice it, but forgetfulness is one of the hidden enemy of productivity. Just look at our annual resolution. It’s almost the end of the year now, ask yourself, how many have actually been fulfilled? There will usually be a lot of resolution left unfulfilled. For some they have totally forgotten that they even have one.

Another example to illustrate how forgetfulness is productivity number 1 killer is handling our finance. We have read all there is to know about financial management such as how to save that emergency money, how to avoid impulsive buying etc but usually when we really want something, we will just buy it. This can only happen if we forget the whole idea of financial management. The worse case scenario would be when we deliberately forget all the tips.

How To Be Reminded Of Things & Goals

The only way we can overcome forgetfulness is simply to remind ourselves all the time. Listed below are a few simple ways to actually do that.

1) Make use of screensaver. Why on earth are we displaying piping lines as our screensaver. What good will that do. Put up encouraging words such as “It’s been at least 5 minutes since you do anything, do something now!!”

2) Constantly edit your wallpaper by listing down your priorities. I need to have pictures as my wallpaper. So what I did is to edit the pictures using Gimp to list down my top 5 goals in life (Beautifully written of course)

3) Set alarm for your work. After a while you will need to have a break. What I would recommend you to do is to set an alarm on your computer to ensure you will be able to get back to work promptly.

I suggest an online alarm clock – Kukuklok.com. You can set what kind of alarm noise you want from cockerel, classic clock, electronic and slayer guitar. Make sure you max out the volume of your speaker. That should work. If not, your spouse will threaten you to start working just to make the noise stop.

The simpler way is of course to set up the alarm on your cellphone.

4) Install ReminderFox extension to your Firefox. This is especially for those who use Firefox as their browser. You can install this extension (ReminderFox)and organize how you want to be reminded.

5) Paste reminders on the wall. I remember a scene from the movie – Hollow Man where the scientist had pasted a note reminding him to get back to work on the ceiling. Whenever he is getting sleepy or is lying on the bed, he will immediately see that note. I’m not sure whether he gets back to work after that or just ignore the reminder. But still, it’s one of the most efficient way to remind yourself.

Some other interesting places to paste the note is in your wallet, at the steering wheel of your car or on top of your television. The rule is to place it at the most viewed place throughout the day.

6) Use unwritten reminder. Pasting notes to remind ourselves is a great idea but when you have a few thousand things to remember, your house may not need the new repainting (It will be covered with that small notes pasted on the wall)

What you should try to do is to associate the things you see everyday to your list of things to remember. For example, I will always be reminded to check whether I’m out of gas whenever I come across a gas station while driving.

Try this with everything else. The best things you can do is to associate seeing money with saving. Imagine, seeing money and you immediately save it. You will be rich.

7) Ask a friend to remind you. Ask for help from your friends to remind you of your goals. For example, make it a habit to bring your friend when you go shopping. This friend is assigned to deter you from buying. Maybe by telling you it’s too expensive or it looks ugly on you.

If you have such friends, sticking to your budget or resolution will be easier. If you do have such friends, cherish them well.

- I wonder -
Any other ideas on how to be reminded of things or your goals?

———- Personal Note ———–
When I was 16 years old, I wrote my goals on the inside of my wardrobe. One of the goals include being a master in martial art. Of course, my fellow friends found out about my goals and they made fun of the goals. That in a way had deterred me partially from pursuing my goals.

Lesson learnt – ditch those friends.

Photo Credit – Mhatma

Summary – 10 lines you can say to yourself after a failure

I am not perfect. Even though I write a personal development blog, it doesn’t mean that I am the most developed person on the planet. We will always be in the process to be slightly better everyday. That’s exactly what this blog is all about

Personal development is just like life. It doesn’t matter whether you will end up a prime minister or a clerk, what matter is how you get there. And along this journey, some mistakes are bound to happen.

I confess that I procrastinate once in a while (Ok, maybe a lot), I sometimes manage my finance poorly (bought an external drive when I don’t actually need it). My point is, despite my articles that describe how to combat procrastinate and good financial tips, I can still make mistake and I can sometimes fail to follow my own advice.

This is where it becomes a problem. For the average guy like us, each failure can have some effect like depression, stress etc. How then can we effectively come back from a failure. For example, how can I remanage my finance after an out of control shopping spree? Should I start back from zero? Or is there any other way?

These are some suggestion on how to make that come back; a few examples of lines you can say to yourself to reset your life after a failure.

1) Behold! My experiment on making mistakes has completed. Procrastination really takes about half of your life.

2) Nobody was hurt. I am still alive. It is up to me to deal with the problem. I will make sure the external drive I just bought worth every penny I spent.

3)) All the negative feeling I’m having now because of the failure is officially postponed to next week. I will entertain them then. Thank you for understanding.

4) People might not even notice. They are usually too busy with themselves

5) So that’s what happen if (insert mistake here).. HAHAHAHA.

6) My life is short, I’m giving myself 2 minutes to mourn

7) Now where was I?

8] Resetting life… Starting now

9) If I want things to change, I will first need to change

10) Get up and just do something

Conclusion

We all fail ourselves at some point in life. We have two options. Making the come back easier or harder for us. The answer should be obvious – Always aim to make things easier for you.

- I wonder -
What do you say to yourself after a failure?

————– Personal Note ———–
I have a friend who diet. And whenever she failed to follow her diet and ate fatty food, she would literally torture herself by vomitting it all out. She would then be upset and depressed with the failure that even a stranger will be able to see it in her face.

Believe me, nothing good can come from this self torture. So stop it already.

Photo Credit – Hamed Masoumi

Summary – Cats Meow & Dogs Bark

The Problem

Have you ever had that day where you just don’t know what to do, despite the mountains of things you can do? It worsen when you actually know what you are supposed to do but you just don’t want to do it. Am I making any sense here?

For example, you know you have a blog entry to write, the ideas are pouring but when you switch on your laptop, you just end up spending your day browsing through millions of other blogs or socializing via twitter instead. At the end of the day, no entries were written. And there goes another day of your life.

This is NOT another case of procrastination. It’s more like doing everything else except for the one thing you need to do. It happens to me all the time and I’m sure it happens to you too. Can I ask? How do you overcome it?

Ths Solution

This is how I overcome the problem everytime I encounter it.

I am often overwhelmed with a thousand things to do, like researching, visitting others’ blogs, stumbling interesting articles etc, when all I really should do is write an article here in Lesson In Life. What I will then do is to rediscover what my immediate role at the time.

There is only one rule to this technique – There should only be one role to play at any time.

If I am a blogger, I should be blogging.. Period. Something is definitely wrong if I declare myself a blogger when I’m not even blogging. Realizing this immediately gives me more focus and clarity to write. Try it, you will be amazed that something so simple can do wonders.

The same goes to your career. Something is definitely wrong if you are a fireman but you like to show off how brave you are by creating fire.

Or if you are an assistant manager but the manager has more work on his table than you.

Conclusion – if you are a blogger, you blog. Everything else should take second place. Apply this to everything in your life, and your life will be so much simpler.

- I wonder -
If you can pick any one role to accomplish something today, what will you be? A blogger? A kitchen slave? A student? or others?

——— Personal Note ———–
What I usually do when I am supposed to be writing

• Stumble new interesting entries (Befriend me)
• Check out what’s top stories on Digg (Befriend me)
• Explore Facebook (Befriend me)
• Reading Twitter (Follow me)
• Replying emails (Shoot me an email)
• Read forums
• Visit others’ blogs
• Analyzing the blog’s statistic
• Reading my RSS Feed
• Tweaking the blog

Photo Credit – Striatic