If I were asked to describe what lists are and how important they are to achieving your goals, I would compare them to a ladder. All our goals represent peaks of varying heights and difficulties. You can climb up steep slopes, slipping on steep slopes and tripping over unexpected obstacles. Or you can calmly climb the ladder-list, confidently moving from one step-task to another.
Lists allow us to divide complex tasks into many small ones, track progress and evaluate the efforts made. They prevent us from forgetting what we need and help us organize our day correctly. Lists are all around us and can be useful in literally any area.
1. Creative ideas
Creativity is a spontaneous process; it is quite difficult to force it into the framework of standards. Therefore, creating lists of valuable ideas, original finds, and unusual thoughts will come to your aid at a time when absolutely nothing original comes to mind, but you need to create.
2. Books to read
If, after reading another book, you struggle every time choosing the next one, then it’s time to create a special reading list. In it you will enter every book that your friends recommended to you, that you read about in or just saw from your neighbor on the subway. By the way, with the help of this list you can quickly estimate the number of publications you have read and even remember the most useful thoughts from them.
The worst thing is when you decide to keep a list of interesting places, experiences and situations that have happened in your life, and suddenly realize that you have absolutely nothing to fill it with. An excellent reason to reconsider your attitude towards life and begin to purposefully fill it with interesting pages.
4. Lists of current tasks
Yes, it's boring and banal, but we couldn't miss this type of list. They will help you cope better with your daily routine, manage everything and never be late for anything. In addition, contemplating a column of neatly crossed out tasks brings simply unearthly pleasure at the end of a hard day.
5. List of movies to watch
Everything is the same as about books. There are such a huge number of films being released now that wasting time on all sorts of nonsense is an unaffordable luxury. A well-thought-out list of films will protect you from random selection and will allow you to see exactly the movie that suits your interests.
6. Wish list
The crisis of desires is no joke. If at one fine moment you felt universal boredom and realized that you didn’t want anything, then this is it. You need to love, protect and nurture your desires. And in order for them to grow better, you need to write them down in a special list, which should contain at least .
7. Anti-list
Everyone is used to the fact that you need to write down the tasks that you have to complete on your to-do list. But in some situations it will be much more useful to create a list of things that should never be done. Drink. Take up cigarettes again. Stare at the TV. Lie. If you lived a day without completing a single item on this black list, it means you are moving in the right direction.
What original lists do you keep? The idea of the most unusual list from your comments will be included in the text of the article, indicating its author and gratitude from the editor!
Added.
And here, as we promised, is a list of the best lists from our readers:
- list of things we did for the first time - Nigar Amirova;
- reasons to smile, to increase the level of “causeless happiness” - Marina.Kreate;
- places in my city that I haven’t been to yet and that I want to visit - Lifeofabigteddybear Hanna Pehterava;
- lists of improbabilities - Mira Gaziz.
Thanks to everyone who responded to our request and shared their thoughts with us!
A daily action list is the key to completing all tasks. He will tell you what to do every day to ensure you get closer to your goals. You can set aside a certain amount of time to work on each project, like small chunks, or choose another way to make each day productive. Let's imagine that you work for Tasty Munchies and have to review the monthly financials of forty retail locations by the end of the month - and that deadline is 20 days from now. (For some of us, this is the most boring thing in the world. But for you, it is an exciting expression of your true life purpose.) You need to review 40 reports in 20 days. This means that in order to achieve the final goal, you need to study two reports a day. You know that if you read two reports every day, you will complete the task.
Think about your top projects and decide how much time in the day is enough to keep none of them stagnant. This could be the number of pages that need to be read or written, the number of calls that need to be made, or the amount of time that needs to be spent on a project each day. Write it all down on your daily action list. This is the minimum required to move forward. When you calculated it, you knew that if you devoted some time to each task every day, you would eventually finish everything.
Now that you have a list of daily actions, make it a habit. Review it every day and make sure you're spending time on everything on your list. All your tasks will move forward. And if you start your day with this list, you can consider your daily quota completed as soon as you finish today's list - even if all this work only takes half an hour.
Like routines. These are daily, mandatory, repeated actions every day that the housewife performs on weekends, holidays, and during illness (of course not severe). Although, to be honest, many people, including me, don’t really like this definition. I prefer to call them rituals. Performing rituals should become a habit and gradually begin to be done automatically. Don't be alarmed that they may take up a lot of your time. This is quite normal during login. Gradually, you will spend less and less time on household chores. I would like to note that the final list of routines is compiled not in one day, but over months. Yes, you heard right, that’s exactly how long it will take you to perfect your daily habits. Every few days, point by point, add the next thing or cross it out if it confuses you, in general, experiment. Don't try to include all the housework. Start small. Otherwise, you will be disappointed.
Morning and evening routines according to the Fly Lady system
- Cosmetic procedures (baths for feet, face, hands, peelings, etc.) - I do all the masks before the first or second part to save time.
- Take a shower.
- Apply cream.
These are the morning and evening routines (rituals) I perform every day. The same principle applies to weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual to-do lists. Again, I'll give you my example.
Weekly to-do list:
- Planning for the next week (usually I do this on Friday).
- Grocery shopping (the only thing I do on the weekends).
- Wipe and wash kitchen appliances: kettle, microwave, stove, oven, multicooker, etc.
- Cleaning and washing the vacuum cleaner.
- Washing and ironing.
- Change of bed linen (once every 2 weeks).
Monthly to-do list:
- Makeup bag inventory.
- Household inventory goods.
- Change sponges and rags.
- Wash the table and chairs.
- Disinfection of washcloths and toothbrushes.
- Washing combs.
- Financial planning for the month, drawing up a report for the previous month.
- Monthly planning.
- Record meter readings and take them to the housing department.
- Payment for apartment, kindergarten, internet, loan.
List of quarterly tasks:
- Change water filters.
- Wash the curtains (not all at once, but one room at a time every quarter).
- Fold/Take out seasonal clothing.
- Washing bedspreads.
- computer.
- Cleaning carpets and rugs (not all at once, but one room at a time every quarter).
And don't forget to write down all your routines in your Audit Log. I would be glad if you share your daily to-do list in the comments.
For self-education, I suggest watching a short video))
I kiss everyone!
The tree grows slowly. But nevertheless it gets bigger and bigger. You grow in the same way (meaning personal growth) - slowly but surely.
You've probably already read the list of 50 things you should try before you die, and now here is a list of daily things that you should do constantly.
The following tips are quite obvious, but at the same time they are not always used by us, since they seem too insignificant to change anything.
Don't forget, the key word here is “daily.” If there is no consistency, there will be no visible results. Water wears away the stone drop by drop.
And of course, you shouldn’t get hung up on doing it all at once. Start with what seems more necessary and interesting to you.
1 . Be more observant. Watch everything that happens around you. The life around us is an excellent source for new experiences and new ideas.
2.
Don't miss a single idea that comes to your mind. Write down each one - even if you don’t manage to implement it right away, you can come back to it later.
3.
Take more from the people around you. Around you is a cycle of examples, ideas, words, relationships, mistakes, experience. Notice and use it to your advantage.
4.
Always carry a book or magazine with you. In this way, you use to your advantage any period of time that could previously have been wasted - time on the road, in queues, waiting for results.
5.
Devote at least 30 minutes every day to reading.
6.
Meditate. Make it a habit. This is both “brain gymnastics” and an excellent opportunity to bring clarity to your actions.
7.
Try to analyze the past day every evening. What did you achieve? What - no? How did you have to make sure everything turned out perfect?
8.
Drink more water.
9.
Do it.
10.
Read collections of quotes more often. This is a concentrated collection of wisdom.
11.
Choose your “useful tip of the day” and apply it.
12.
Keep personal “accounting”: record all income and expenses. So at the end of the month the question does not arise: “Where did I manage to spend all the money?”; you will be able to track useless purchases that eat up your budget and avoid them; You can clearly imagine your real purchasing power.
13.
Do something for the first time. Or find a new way to do some mundane task - for example, a more convenient and shorter way to work. This trains your mental abilities.
14.
Read online materials to your advantage, draw conclusions, and don’t just skim.
15.
Use the timer more often when performing any task.
16.
Learn to use guidelines, algorithms and techniques. Use the known ones, look for new ones. For example, master the Keyboard Shortcut Editor, with which you can create your own and edit existing hotkeys.
17.
Set goals, major and minor, immediate and long-term.
18.
Wake up earlier.
19.
Listen to educational or motivational programs if you are busy doing something that does not require full concentration.
20.
Be friendly throughout the day. This inspires optimism and lifts your spirits.
21.
Read a random Wikipedia article every day to learn about things you didn't know about before.
22.
Look for something funny or fun in life. Only this helps you get real pleasure from it.
And in the end, a little video about what our life consists of. Of short moments, moments that can never be returned. So let us enjoy and use each of them for the benefit of ourselves and others!
If you're reading this post, you probably use some sort of daily to-do list in your life, right? The question is, are you using this system to realize your potential? Are you able to do everything according to plan, as written in this schedule?
If you, like many people, plan your time and can even control the implementation of the routine, this is, of course, reasonable. But you may be making a mistake that many people make, which becomes a hindrance not only in terms of productivity, but also simply in terms of organizing your thoughts.
"What are we talking about?" - you ask. Now let's explain
What does your daily to-do list contain? Is it enough to divide your time between upcoming tasks? Can you realistically complete these tasks in the allotted amount of time? Not always. And this leads to a failure of the plan and, as a result, to dissatisfaction with oneself.
How to build the right list of important things to do
Your daily to-do list should consist of small tasks that take no more than a couple of hours. Otherwise, they have no place on your overall list.
This is the mistake of many. They use daily planning as a reminder of important things that need serious work. This takes up one item on the list - that's all there is to it. Because it is difficult for a person to identify a priority task on a list where large projects and small tasks from everyday life stand nearby. 
As you can see, if you don't separate your long-term goals and projects from your regular activities, you won't achieve anything in either of them.
Keep a list of long-term productivity
What does it mean? Many people are unaware that there are other types of time management besides simple daily to-do lists. These are personal tasks to improve productivity. And not only do they increase productivity while keeping your to-do list clearer and clearer, but they also allow you to think ahead. This system will allow you to take control of your time and not let your day control you. It's clear?
Let's look at the structure of these lists - for organizing productivity and the typical daily to-do list that most people practice.
- List of fundamental goals. It is written as a long-term view of 90-180 days to plan out what you want to achieve in that period of time. What needs to be done in the next 3-6 months? What are the tasks and activities that will have a huge impact on your work or your life? These elements make up your main, target list. This is a plan - “what” and “when” you want to achieve.
- Weekly to-do list. Using it will serve as a breakdown of the elements of your first, foundational list of goals. These elements work towards the main project, but break the larger task into smaller subsets. This allows you to see what you need to work on week to week to achieve your goals and how your daily schedule can be organized.
- Your daily to-do list. And finally, we move on to the simplest thing, which helps to break down the weekly list of planned tasks into small tasks that you can solve in just a couple of hours. It's sort of a task filter that goes down from the top two lists to eventually allow you to complete each project that you want to see completed.
Result?
It may seem a little strange to have three lists instead of one, but look what happens as a result.
Suddenly, by creating a master list, so to speak, your daily list starts to mean something. It becomes free of long-term projects and includes only small tasks that need to be done each day to allow you to complete everything planned. You begin to happily cross off completed items from your daily plan. You can now turn to completing important projects and ultimately achieving your ultimate long-term goals.
The result: Your daily to-do list goes from being a mere dumping ground for everything you have to do to becoming a key driver of your productivity and success.