Simple Way to Manage To-Dos – TPW355

Join me in this week's episode of The Productive Woman podcast as we discuss ways we can manage our ever-growing to-do list with simple and effective systems.   Using a simple to-do management system can help us stay productive A lot of us struggle at times to stay on top of all the things we need and want to do. Some of this comes from the fact that most of us wear more than one hat and we have plenty of things to do in each of the roles that are important to us. As we discussed back in episode 215--Task Management 101, we face a couple of types of challenges: * Keeping track of it all – As women, we often have not only our tasks to take care of but those of other people as well. We have to make sure the most important things get done--juggling multiple roles for family, home, job (and maybe a side hustle), volunteer projects, friends/social activities, hobbies and interests, and self-care. Taking on too much – We often have unrealistic expectations of ourselves, an unrealistic understanding of what we can do in the time available, and an unrealistic idea of how long tasks take.  In episode 215 we talked about the fundamentals of effective task management (check out that episode for more detail) and I thought this would be a good time to review those fundamentals. 1. Building the right habits- Anything that’s habitual uses a different part of our brain, leaving space for creative thinking elsewhere. 2. Understanding the key concepts-It’s important to distinguish between tasks and projects: -A task can be done in one segment of time in one location with one set of tools.  -A project requires more than one step, one segment of time, a session of work.  -Your to-do list should have only tasks, which might (or might not) be organized by projects. For more info, listen to episode 130--What's On Your To-Do List? 3. Understanding (and applying) the basics of the GTD (Getting Things Done) Approach- This is based on the teachings of David Allen in his book, Getting Things Done. The basic components of a high-functioning task management system are: * Capture: Have a place to put everything you need to do and get it off your mind Make it easy – Have it with you and use a tool that makes it easy to get the task into your inbox (to be processed later)  Be consistent – Always do it and put everything in the same place * Process Go through all the emails in your inbox and put them where they need to be – categories, labels, deadlines, etc.  Schedule regular brief times to do this – perhaps in the morning, afternoon, or evening Sometimes, the processing means deciding not to do it or not to do it until later  * Do Have effective ways to view your task list  Scheduling  Block scheduling/batch processing  Delegation: Maybe the things that need to be done don’t need to be done by you. Maybe you need a system to keep track of stuff you’re waiting for other people to do. * Review: This is a key element of effective task management! * Even if you’ve captured and processed your to-do list, if you never look at your list again, you don’t get to the “Do” step because you won’t remember.