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July 26 - July 27, 2022
Contents Other Books By Damon Zahariades Your Free Gift Foreword What Are Your To-Do Lists Supposed To Accomplish? The Productivity Paradox: How Your To-Do Lists Are Hampering Your Success I. Why You're Not Finishing Your List Of To-Do Items Reason #1: You Misunderstand The Goal Of To-Do Lists Reason #2: You Neglect To Assign Deadlines Reason #3: Your Lists Are Too Long Reason #4: Your Lists Have Too Much Variability Reason #5: You Give Yourself Too Many Options Reason #6: You Neglect To Add Context For Each Task Reason #7: Your Tasks Are Defined Too Broadly Reason #8: Your Tasks Are Not
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What Are Your To-Do Lists Supposed To Accomplish?
First, it will give you control over your workday.
Second, you’ll be able to meet your deadlines.
Third, your to-do list will ensure you’re working on the right tasks at the right time.
Fourth, you’ll avoid wasting valuable time putting out fires.
Sixth, your task list will greatly reduce your stress.
Seventh, a properly designed to-do list will improve your focus.
Lastly, a good task list will eliminate the frustration and guilt you feel when you fall behind on projects. It will help you to work more smartly and with greater purpose. You’ll focus on items that move you closer to your goals, giving you a real sense of accomplishment at the end of each day.
The Productivity Paradox: How Your To-Do Lists Are Hampering Your Success
First, they reveal that many to-do lists are ineffective.
Second, many to-do list items are completed quickly, some within minutes.
A large number of to-do items may get crossed off the list, but there’s no indication they’re the right items - the important stuff. This gives the individual a false sense of accomplishment.
Priority is key
Third, it indicates that many to-do lists are too long. They’re overloaded with tasks.
Could get overwhelming
We’ll be forced to carry them forward or abandon them.
Not the plan
Fourth, the data above suggest that many people approach task management without having a clear grasp of their schedules and availability.
the Productivity Paradox. We create to-do lists to help us organize tasks, manage our time, and get things done. But because we rely on ill-conceived task management systems, we inadvertently create lists that sabotage our efforts.
Lists are the culprit
In doing so, we forfeit our productivity. We end up getting less done instead of more. In the next section, we’re going to take a close look at your current to-do list system. Unless you’ve received formal task management training, there’s a fair chance your lists are hampering your success.
Part I Why You're Not Finishing Your List Of To-Do Items
Ideally, you should be able to cross off every item that appears on your to-do lists at the end of each day.
I’m going to cover the eight most common reasons people fail to get through their lists. Any one of them can wreck your productivity and prevent you from getting things done on time.
List of 8 failures *
Reason #1: You Misunderstand The Goal Of To-Do Lists
Why do you create to-do lists? What do you hope to accomplish with them?
The main purpose of your to-do list is to help you organize your tasks and projects, and highlight the important stuff.
Your task list isn’t a tool for getting everything done. Rather, it’s a tool that will ensure you get the right things done.
Reason #2: You Neglect To Assign Deadlines
A to-do list without deadlines is a wish list. Nothing more. Without deadlines, we lean toward inaction. Deadlines do more than just impose a sense of urgency. They help us to prioritize tasks and projects based on the amount of time we have to complete them.
Additionally, when they loom, they spur us to take action.
Deadlines are the enemy of procrastination. They motivate us to take action and finish tasks.
Recall Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you choose not to assign deadlines to your to-do items, don’t be surprised when those items linger on your list.
Reason #3: Your Lists Are Too Long
You know what I’m referring to. I’m talking about daily task lists that seem to never end. They go on and on, containing dozens of items.
Second, they’re unrealistic. Lists that are too long eventually reach a point at which they become unmanageable.
Third, they’re discouraging. You finish each day realizing that you failed to complete the day’s list of tasks.
Fourth, they encourage procrastination.
Many people do a brain dump of every task they need or want to get done. They record everything on a single list. The problem is, they neglect to categorize these tasks and put them on separate lists according to context, priority, and urgency.
Reason #4: Your Lists Have Too Much Variability
To-do lists that serve as brain dump repositories invariably collect tasks that vary too broadly in scope. Items that will take three minutes to complete are listed next to items that will take three weeks. High-priority tasks are listed next to low-priority tasks that can be put on the back burner indefinitely. You’ll also find items associated with a wide swath of unrelated projects. In other words, there’s no connection between the various tasks. There are serious consequences to this approach. First, faced with a long list of options, you’re likely to either become paralyzed with inaction
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These circumstances can cause your stress levels to skyrocket. That, in turn, will make it more difficult to produce high-quality work you can be proud of, and do so on time.
Reason #5: You Give Yourself Too Many Options
This issue is closely related to having too much variability in your task lists. But it deserves its own mention due to its effect on how the brain makes decisions. We wake up in the morning with a limited store of cognitive resources. This store is quickly used up throughout the day as we make decisions. All decisions, simple and complex, take a toll.
You’re tired and have fewer cognitive resources at your disposal. As a result, your ability to make rational decisions is impaired. This is called decision fatigue. It’s a state in which you’re less able to make good decisions because you’re mentally exhausted from making decisions throughout the day. In other words, your cognitive resources have been exhausted. You’re running on fumes.
we’re more inclined to choose activities that offer immediate gratification over those that are arguably better for us, but require more effort.
As mentioned above, each decision erodes your store of cognitive resources and increases your decision fatigue.
Reason #6: You Neglect To Add Context For Each Task
One of the greatest failings in most to-do lists is a lack of context for individual tasks. Items are written down without any indication about the time needed to complete them, their priority, and the roles they play in achieving specific goals. Without such context, it’s difficult to know which tasks deserve your immediate attention. In fact, it’s difficult to even know if you’re able to work on a particular task given your circumstances.
The point is, it’s difficult to know whether you should tackle a to-do item without knowing its contextual details. When you create a list of tasks without context, you end up with options that are difficult to choose from. The result? Your list, which is supposed to be a record of things you need to get done, becomes a growing record of things left unaddressed and unfinished. Reason #7: Your Tasks Are Defined Too Broadly
The problem with broadly-defined tasks is that they’re too large in scope. Many lack a clear starting point and ending point. As a result, there’s no way to properly measure success.
Projects masquerade as tasks when they haven’t been broken down to their constituent parts.
The point is, defining tasks too broadly is detrimental to their completion. Their vagueness ensures they linger. If you’re having trouble completing to-do items, check whether they can be broken down to smaller tasks.
