It happens to us all. you come home from a long day of work and sit down ready to be productive, you look at your to-do list and immediately get overwhelmed, ending up achieving so much less throughout the day. the truth is, there are many reasons for this which I'm about to get into. whether it be the paradox of choice when deciding what to work on first, or just being overwhelmed by the number of things you need to get done that can feel stressful, and daunting, and can lead to procrastination.
this post is exactly what you need, and it'll teach you about the ways you can navigate your to-do list in a productive way that can help you achieve so much more at the ultimate goal: a higher quality level, and less procrastination, lower stress levels and a calmer state of mind.
the TDT (to-do table)
a couple of months ago, I came across the book, 'Working Hard, Hardly Working' by Grace Beverley, and read it in less than 24 hours. she shared lots of essential tips that can help organize your life without feeling burnt out but still managing your time for success. she comments on hacks and tips that I have been quite familiar with for a long time, like the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule), which can be a huge catalyst in getting work done.
one unique tip that I hadn't come across before, however, is the 'to-do table' she outlines. essentially, it's a way to organize your to-do list in terms of how much energy each task requires. the benefit to this is that even if you don't have enough energy to work on completing a lab report that's due this weekend, you can look at another section of the to-do list to accomplish something else, that would still let you get things done and cross important tasks off your list, regardless of how low your focus levels may be. this could be like an admin task, sending mundane emails, or cleaning a stack of papers on your desk, which can also work as a simultaneous way to get you into the flow zone of working. once you finish those tasks, you crossed off something you've needed to do for a while, while preparing for something more challenging.
a layout of the TDT as she shared in her book:
I highly recommend trying this out, because it helps you visualize the things you need to get done and makes it easier to complete everything since you can work on tasks in one section depending on your energy or how you're feeling.
note to remember: if you have something urgent and important that needs to get done, (let's say it's an essay due that night), make sure you set a time limit for the other 'less-energy' oriented tasks. this way you can get more done in less time, and work naturally with your energy fluctuations throughout the day.
this leads me to the next tip, which may be the most important:
2. Parkinson's Law:
I go into this in much more detail in my weekly newsletter post here which is all about Parkinson's law. Essentially it's the notion that 'work expands to fill the time allocated to it'. Meaning, if you have a task that needs to be completed by the end of the week, your time allocated to work on it is all the days leading up to that deadline. The time you spend working on it will therefore expand to fill those days and you will somehow still end up submitting it right around the deadline (even though you could actually have got it done in two hours).
Once you understand this concept, it will be much easier to get things done efficiently and crossed off your to-do list because you won't be spending too long on something that frankly does not need as much time as you think. If you look at this from another perspective, you can imagine a time when you procrastinated with something until the last minute and still managed to get it done. While it may not have been done with the same quality, it was completed.
The way you can use this to your advantage is to set a deadline for yourself that's earlier than the real deadline so that you can save time and spend more energy on things that are instead more important like bigger projects that require more attention.
3. Eisenhower matrix
this is an easy way to rearrange your to-do list so you just know where to start and what to focus on. you can divide your tasks into 4 categories as seen below, allowing you to prioritize certain things and go through one category at a time.
while this may not necessarily reduce the number of things you need to get done because it's just rearranging the situation, it can be extremely helpful in lowering how overwhelming your to-do list looks which is often half of the stress gone. I go into this more in my blog post here about methods of managing stress, since a lot of the time, stress itself can develop from just the thought of so much needing to be done but not knowing where to start, so this can be the way you work around that.
5. the power of using friction
I wrote a recent newsletter post all about this, but to sum it up, you can increase friction around distractions, and reduce friction around work so that it's easier to get into the flow of things rather than falling into the same loop of procrastination. read more about it in my newsletter here.
4. just getting it done
easier said than done, I know. but there are ways you can mitigate the challenges of getting something done when you don't want to do it. besides using friction to your advantage, here are a couple more examples:
using focus apps (click here for some of my favorites)
creating rewards for completion
with apps like 'Forest' for example, you can set a Pomodoro timer to focus on a task without the ability to open other apps on your phone. it combines being just a focus app and also giving you rewards because, at the end of a session, you would have grown a new tree and gained tokens.
starting
this is often the hardest part, as I explain in my blog post here which is all about why we initially associate 'starting' with 'I'll do it later' and ways you can push past that to get into the flow.
the takeaway:
throughout our lives, there are going to be some super busy phases where our to-do list feels like the end of the world. but with these tips, you can navigate it so that you can get the most done while simultaneously decreasing the negative feelings around it.
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