We all face the extra-long to-do list now and then. Because many of us wear lots of hats in our one-person businesses, and we don’t always have a team of people to help us out, our to-do lists can become unwieldy - sometimes to the point of outrageousness. Once a task list reach that stage, we can often become completely incapable of getting any of it done! It’s as though the big, bad, scary to-do monster has paralyzed us with indecision and overwhelmed us into inaction.

Here’s what I do when I’m faced with the monster of all monster task lists. I divide it up into 3’s: Must-Do’s, Should Do’s, and Everything Else. Each item on my to-do list has to be re-routed to one of these three new sublists. Here’s how to determine which items go into which list.

Must-Do’s are tasks that you are obligated to complete, either because you have an agreement or a contract with someone else to do so. If you are a freelancer, for example, you have clients that you’ve contracted with to perform certain tasks. Those will always go into the Must-Do sublist. Likewise, you may have items on your list that absolutely have to get done for yourself (such as paying bills and/or taxes on time) or there will be fairly impactful consequences for inaction. Move all must-do tasks onto this list first.

Should-Do’s are items on your to-do list that are important because accomplishing them would be beneficial to you or your business in a rather large way. Not getting them done won’t necessarily hurt you or your business, but getting them done would make a nice difference in income or sanity or happiness, for example. Move these types of items into this sublist now.

Everything Else is … well … everything that’s not a Must-Do or a Should-Do.

Now that you have your 3 sublists, you are going to divide the Everything Else sublist into 3’s yet again. Because these items are the least important of all the tasks you have on your list, you’ll want to get as many of them off your shoulders as soon as possible. Divide these up into the following sub-sub-lists:

Kick ‘Em Off: These are tasks that really aren’t important enough to waste a moment of time on, but somehow they snuck onto the list for one reason or another. Often we think something might need to be done for a moment, and then later realize it really wasn’t important at all. Dump any of those right now.

Put ‘Em Off: There’s a good chance that a large majority of the Everything Else list will be moved into this sub-sub-list. Most of the items are important enough to get done at some point, but there’s no great urgency to any of them. Throw those here.

Pawn ‘Em Off: If you’re lucky, you’ll find a few items on the list that could be pawned off on someone else. We don’t always have a large number of people that we can rely on to help us with our daily tasks, but hopefully there is a short list of people that are there to help us on occasion (and vice-versa). If you’ve been networking, then you probably have a few virtual friends that would be happy to give you a hand. Maybe that designer friend of yours would edit a photo for you, in return for that time you helped her brainstorm an idea. That’s one of the great things about networking, so don’t forget to make use of it (without abusing it of course).

Now that you’ve divided your list up into smaller chunks, it should make the monster look much less threatening. Tackle the Must-Do’s first, then the Should-Do’s, and eventually the Put ‘Em Off’s. What was once overwhelming will become actionable, and you’ll be back on track in no time.

(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

Posted on June 19th, 2008 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: GTD