Posts Tagged ‘to-do lists’

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other night who is a successful business owner.

She and her husband do the lions-share of the work in their 2 stores and what came up were all the million and one ways in which to keep track, log, list, remind and otherwise drive oneself nuts trying to stay organized and on top of the workload of a small-mid size business.

This is not the first time I have heard this. Many of my clients are faced with not the lack of tools with which to stay organized but quite the opposite…there are so many!! Which is the BEST?

I wish I could tell you. But I can’t. What I can tell you is that I try to use them all for a while so that I can speak to as many of the productivity tools out there with some aplomb.

Having said that I think the simplest is always best. And on top of that I think that you just have to make a decision to use one or two – for better or for worse and stick to them. Even if something shiner and newer comes out. Just stay where you are and get really good with the tools you have otherwise you’ll go nuts and spend all of your time messing around with productivity tools and no time being productive. I see that a lot.

My short list:

Evernote – it is your external memory. You can use tags and notebooks and don’t really have to be too terribly organized. Just throw stuff in there that you want for later. It is great for information that you want but don’t know where to put. Information that you don’t necessarily need immediately.

Book lists, pic of your friend’s purse that you want to find online, clip web pages of notes for your website etc Syncs to your phone.

Manymoon - great for project management and sharing in groups. You can link to Google calandar and upload docs to it so there is a bit of a dropbox functionality here. There are tasks for each project that you can assign to team members, reminders can be set up, Also syncs to your phone. I’m using it for a work team and will try it with a client too. Stay tuned!

What are your favorite to-do list apps? Project management tools?

Slowing down

Ok … so let’s pretend we agree that slowing down and focusing in on one task at a time is the right way to go. What if we took it even further and said that no-tasking is the way to go?  What would that look like? I think it would look like you having fun at your job, fun running your business and bottom line  feeling much less overwhelmed.

I’m not so excited by the “shoulds” and the “have tos” as I am by the “get-tos” and the “love-tos.”  I wonder if we would be way  more organized if we stopped trying to get it all done and focused in on the things we love to do.  It may sound impossible (who’s going to pick up the laundry?, etc) but there are services for so many things:

Image by 416style via Flickr

laundry for example, food delivery, dog-walking (we love to do that though).

Outsourcing and delegating are great ways to embark on your no-tasking adventure. If you have to do something you don’t love, back against the wall, wall on fire…there is always the option of going into the fire. Really focusing in on what it is you are doing until you see the fun in it.

The research is in…

best way to get what you want done is focusing in on one thing at a time. It may sound like a crazy suggestion if you have 50 things on your to-do list or task list but you really can only do one thing a time. That is, if you want to avoid crashing into the car in front of you.

Isn't this fun when you focus? Image via Wikipedia

The professional organizer in me says, “make a list of 5 things you have to do today and focus on each one until they are done.” The human being in me knows this is often not going to happen. In light of this reality – whatever you are doing – attempt to give it your full attention as an experiment.

Just for a day.

See for yourself if this works better for you, if you are less stressed, if you are excited about what you are doing.  It is the zen thing – the example being that even brushing your teeth is a fulfilling activity if you do it right, that is, with attention.  I’ll go into this more tomorrow but the best case scenario is to have no tasks – that is – you love what you are doing so much you have a “get to do” list. Ohm.