The Power of Lists

Call me strange, but I love crossing items off my to-do lists. In fact, I’ve been a list person for as long as I can remember.

I suppose I might have picked this up from my mother, who has always carried one of those small notebooks in her purse wherever she goes. For jotting down lists, thoughts, and things she doesn’t want to forget. Later, my training as a newspaper reporter reinforced what I’d already observed my mother doing when I was growing up. As a reporter, I always carried a stash of pens and at least two notebooks in my car—just so I was prepared for that random newsworthy event.

I’m no longer working in the news business, but I do carry one of those small notebooks in my purse wherever I go—just like my mother. And I’m a fan of work lists too. Which brings me to the subject of this post.

As someone who freelances part time and who also works as a full-time communications and marketing manager, you can imagine that I have a lot of to-do lists. In fact, I maintain separate lists for both areas of my life, along with the usual menagerie of grocery lists and other don’t-forget-to-do-XYZ lists.

I would be completely lost without my lists. Lists help me:

1) Prioritize my workday. Before I dive into any pile of work sitting on my desk, I make a point of writing down all the tasks I need to accomplish that day. And then I prioritize the top three items, and work through those in order. But some days, I’m running the moment I arrive at the office and there’s no time for list making. Even on days like those, though, I eventually take the time to step back and write down what I need to focus on first. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s priority when other requests and assignments land in my inbox. And sometimes priorities change in midstream depending on the kind of workday I’m having.

2) Acknowledge my accomplishments. There are just things that no one else is going to pat me on the back for unless I do the patting myself. Last week, for example, instead of changing into sweats and flipping on the TV set when I came home from work, I changed out of my work clothes, walked out the door again, and went to the gym. I also did a couple loads of laundry. Of course, no one else is going to hand me a medal or pat me on the back for doing a load of whites and a load of darks—and I wouldn’t expect them to. But I know how exhausted I was when I hauled myself to the gym and did those loads of laundry. And that deserved a pat on my own back.

3) Remember administrative to-do items. I don’t know about you, but there are some administrative tasks that I wish I could just ignore, job out, or hand off to someone else. But if you’re like me, there’s no one to delegate these tasks to. So you just have to suck it up and do these things—it’s all part of running a business. Granted, administrative tasks don’t pay the bills, but if you’re running a business, ignoring important things like sending out invoices, tracking your expenses, doing your quarterly taxes, and paying your bills can really get you into trouble. So when I jot these things down on a list, I’m better able to see what needs to get done first. To make things less painful, I sometimes spread these tasks out over a couple of days if there’s no immediate deadline attached to them.

4) Set goals. In addition to helping me organize my daily work life, I also use lists to set immediate and long-term goals. I find it helpful at the start of the week, for example, to think about the items that I need or want to wrap up by the end of my workweek. This helps guide and inform my daily to-do lists, and helps keep me focused on the right tasks throughout the week. I also do similar monthly, quarterly, and yearly planning and usually jot down the top three to five priorities for those time periods.

5) Stay accountable. There’s nothing like a list to help you stay on track. I don’t know about you, but when I write items down in the form of a list, it helps me stay more accountable to the goals I’ve set for myself—whether those goals are daily, weekly, monthly, or longer term. And there’s nothing like getting to the end of your workday and realizing that you can cross all the items off the list that you made at the start of the day. Most times, I carry over a few items into the next day and then make a commitment to finish those items within a certain timeframe. Lists can also help you track how you’re spending your time—informative when you’re trying to determine where your time really is going and how you can better manage it. Outside of the work realm, I’ve also used lists to track my spending habits and to monitor what I’m eating throughout the day. Tracking works because it increases awareness and can create a call to action.

6) Stay on task. Not every request for information, time, or a meeting is a drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-respond-now priority. And few e-mails that land in your inbox need to be answered right away. But when you have a bunch of things flying at you, the urgency of things can get a little skewed. So I always keep my list in front of me throughout the day as a reminder of what my focus needs to be. Of course, priorities can change if a client has an emergency request or you realize that something else needs to float to the top of your list. Sometimes I’ve found it helpful to write down the top item from my list onto a sticky note so that I can place it near my computer monitor. That way, my top priority is always right in front of me, no matter how many distractions come my way that day.

So how do you use lists? How do they help you in your business? Drop me a line and tell me about it!

Photo credit: tiny white lights (Flickr)