“People are remarkably bad at remembering long lists of goals. I learned this at a professional level when trying to get my high-performance coaching clients to stay on track; the longer their lists of to-dos and goals, the more overwhelmed and off-track they got. Clarity comes with simplicity.”
– Brendon Burchard
What’s the difference between your to-do list and your task list? Are you tracking your tasks as well as your time?
Today in pillar eight of our Nine Pillars of Productivity series, we’re talking about the business tools that we use to keep us on task and on track. Last episode, we showed you how to use systems to support productivity in pillar seven.
So often creatives are total visionaries, and it can be overwhelming to have this beautiful, bold vision that seems a long way from where you’re standing now.
Or in the case of one of my client’s, her homework assignment was to create a bigger vision for what she wants from a business. She’s very task-focused and will work away, work away, work away.
So I asked her:
“What are we working towards? What is it that you want?”
After some thought, she shared her vision and replied, “This is where I get stuck, not knowing how to go from vision to action plan.” This is something that Brad and I actually do really well together – we’re able to take a beautiful vision and break it down step by step, day by day into tasks that bear fruit.
Most people’s to-do lists tend to be really long, and completely overwhelming, there’s no way to complete everything. It’s more like a wish list.
It’s easy to distract ourselves when we work from home.
When your task list is focused and really intentional about moving you towards your goals, it’s a lot simpler to get things done.
That’s part of the distinction between a massive to-do list and a daily task list of specific actions that are going to move you closer towards your goals.
Often times the things on your to-do lists are projects. They’re actually not tasks or action items, they’re whole projects that have lived on your to-do list for months like, “Build my list.” This is a common thing we hear from all our clients. “I need to build my list.” List building is an ongoing, consistent project that needs to happen in your business. There are a million and one ways to build a list – so you get started by really understanding this is a project, and create a project plan that then gets turned into a set of daily tasks.
By learning the different types of planning that improve productivity, you can move from your annual goals to quarterly plans to monthly goals, all the way down to:
“What can I do today to move me one step closer towards my goal?”
We’ll share the productivity apps we’ve used, how to simplify your task list, how to keep track of your tasks and more in the full podcast. Meet you over on YouTube!
The Productive Creative online mini-class
Go From Overwhelm And Distraction To Clarity And Confidence In Just 3 Steps.
Jump over to Quiz now get clarity!
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IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- How to begin bringing your beautiful, bold vision into fruition
- The difference between a massive to-do list vs. a task list moving you closer to your goals
- How the 4 Unique Productivity Types personally connect with tasks
LINKS:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
You can also subscribe to this podcast on our Youtube channel.
Transcript
Minette Riordan: Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t have enough time.” Brad Dobson: “I am so overwhelmed.” Minette Riordan: “I need more clarity.” Brad Dobson: “I don’t know how to do this.” Minette Riordan: “My to-do list is miles long.” Brad Dobson: “I’m exhausted.” Minette Riordan: “There’s got to be a better way.” Brad Dobson: Hi there, I’m Brad. Minette Riordan: And I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneurs say them over and over again. Brad Dobson: That’s why we created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m structure- Minette Riordan: And I’m flow, and this is the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges. Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun, and more profit. Join us as we explore the interplay between structure and flow so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Hey everybody, welcome back to structure and flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. I’m Dr. Minette Riordan here with my three time iron-man champion Brad Dobson. Brad Dobson: Not champion, I’ll go with finisher not champion. Minette Riordan: Well you’re a champion in your own mind. Brad Dobson: That’s right. I was the fastest person called Brad Dobson that day. Minette Riordan: You totally were, but today it’s to-do lists, productivity apps, and getting things done. Oh my. Brad Dobson: As you can see, we actually got something done over the last- Minette Riordan: We did. Brad Dobson: Welcome to the first episode recorded from the mother ship, the brand new, what are we going to call this recording studio? We now have a video studio. Minette Riordan: Isn’t the Structure and Flow recording studio, does it have to be something, I kind of like mother ship too. We worked really hard last weekend to get this up and going. I’m not sure we have everything we want in the shelves over here behind us. Brad Dobson: The listeners, you’ll just have to trust us. We’re actually recording from a little bit different. This is the guest room. Minette Riordan: It might entice you to go check us out on YouTube and see what we’re up to. Brad Dobson: That’s right. Minette Riordan: Absolutely. This is episode 109 and it’s part eight of our nine pillars of productivity. We’re almost done. Brad Dobson: Yes, and we’re talking about tasks and to-do lists and productivity apps and getting things done like Minette said. Minette Riordan: Oh my. Brad Dobson: Oh my. Minette Riordan: It’s why we’re all here listening to Structure and Flow. It’s why this show is popular because we are all about getting great things done, not by getting more done, burning yourself out, feeling overwhelmed, but about really honing in on what are the right things to do to get you on the path to profit in your business and keep you there. Brad Dobson: You bet. Minette Riordan: Do you want to read the quote? Brad Dobson: Yeah let’s start with the quote here. From Brenden [Berschard 00:02:52]
Minette Riordan: No Brenden Berschard, he’s a really amazing, awesome coach. Brad Dobson: Cool, okay. “People are remarkably bad at remembering long lists of goals. I learned this at a professional level when trying to get my high performance coaching clients to stay on track. The longer their lists of to-dos and goals, the more overwhelmed and off track they got. Clarity comes with simplicity.” I think he was talking to me when he said that. Minette Riordan: I was just going to say I feel like since we’ve been working together for the last, wow two and a half years since it’s the beginning of July, we can officially say it’s two and a half years, that clarity and simplicity are something that we’ve been working towards and striving forwards. If you’re new to our show, a few episodes back we actually changed the name to Structure and Flow, I think because we personally needed more of the intense focus on getting things done in a way that was about grace and ease, not about just getting more done for the sake of looking busy or improving productivity. Brad Dobson: Yeah and we feel like that helps our audience, you all, much more for us to have more of a laser-like focus on the productivity aspects of growing your creative business. We certainly continue to live and teach a whole bunch of other important stuff about marketing and mindset and all of those things, but it’s the productivity that’s the real killer in terms of making that business happen. Minette Riordan: Yep, absolutely. You hear so many podcast episodes. There’s a million books out there and probably an infinite number of productivity and time management systems and apps. Today we wanted to talk a little bit about the difference between to-do lists and task lists about task management versus time management, and some of the tools that we’re using in our business to keep us on task and on track, because what I realized, and in fact it’s funny we’re recording this. There’s no coincidences, right? I got an email from one of my clients and her homework assignment last week was to create a bigger vision for what it is that she wants from a business, because she’s been very task-focused. She’s working away, working away, working away, and I’m like, “What are we working towards? What is it that you want?” Brad Dobson: Sure. Let’s maybe go to the prototypical example of goals, is New Year’s. Everybody has their New Year’s resolutions which are goals, right? I’m going to lose 100 pounds. I’m going to run a marathon. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that, whatever it is. Those are, we’ll call them dreams, goals. Minette Riordan: Goals and dreams are different. Brad Dobson: But they’re incomplete goals. Then there’s a huge disconnect between all the excitement of those goals or dreams and the how part of things, the tasks that actually need to happen, to say nothing of the visualization and all of that good stuff. When the rubber hits the road, to actually make those happen we need to setup a sequence of things that need to happen, a sequence of tasks that we need to complete in a certain, typically in a certain order with certain priorities. I guess that’s probably where most people, they see goals and tasks, or they see goals but they don’t see tasks. Minette Riordan: Yeah and to-dos are not tasks either. Let’s back up for a minute, actually look at our notes, right. Brad Dobson: I was. Minette Riordan: You were totally on track but I kind of zoned out there for a minute, so not about anything you were saying or doing. Brad Dobson: Good, good, good. Minette Riordan: We’re in the middle of a launch right now of a new educational video series. It aired last week, July 12th if you’re interested it’s all about the productive creative. We’ll tell you more about that at the end of the show. My brain is so caught up in launch mode that I’m pretty distracted. I’m waking up thinking about the launch. I’m going for my walk thinking about the launch. I’m lying in the dentist chair today- Brad Dobson: But that launch is exactly what these people need. Minette Riordan: Exactly. Brad Dobson: Exactly what we need in terms of productivity and tasks and goals. Minette Riordan: The thing that we did today so that we didn’t feel overwhelmed by launch is to sit down and make a list of tasks. My problem with most people’s to-do list is that they’re really long, they completely overwhelm people because there’s way too much on them, you’re never going to get everything on your to-do list. It’s more like a wish list. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt that said, she has a great quote about, “Wishes aren’t to-dos.” Until you take an action it’s just a wish, something like that. I’ll have to look it up. Brad Dobson: Well sure. Minette Riordan: Or call a client- Brad Dobson: You mean I have to talk with somebody? Minette Riordan: Or call a client about an overdo bill. There’s all these things that when we work from home it’s easy to distract ourselves with. When your task list is focused and really intentional about moving you towards your goals, it’s a lot simpler to get things done. That’s part of the distinction between a massive to-do list and a daily task list of specific actions that are going to move you closer towards your goals. Brad Dobson: To take that a little bit further in terms of tasks or even to-dos, one thing that we all struggled with in my software career and I think people generally struggle with is that task A and task B are not necessarily alike, and unless you have taken the time to really think it through it might turn out that task A is a 14 day effort, and task B is a 14 minute effort. It actually takes time and effort just to think that stuff through and try and make those tasks, whether they’re eight hours or four hours or whatever it is, anything longer than that you’re kind of just guessing. Minette Riordan: Yeah which I think is really closely related to the project planning that we talked about in one of our shows before and how important it is to really map out every project that you’re undertaking in your business. I think the number one mistake that so many creatives make is underestimating the amount of time it will take them to complete a task. A task like Brad said could be a minute or a day or a year, sometimes, but from my perspective the difference between a task and a to-do is that a task is aligned with your goals and has clear action steps, and those action steps have time allotted for them, kind of like your focus blocks which we talked a lot about in episode 99. You have clear limiters set out, right, for what you’re going to do in those focus blocks. Brad Dobson: Right, so we’re trying to avoid that to-do list. Of course everybody has a to-do list. Minette Riordan: Yeah and I’m not opposed to to-do lists. Brad Dobson: But it’s not a task list. We said we need to estimate tasks so that we’re actually able to understand how long each one’s going to take. Did we talk about prioritizing? Minette Riordan: No, you want to talk about that one? Brad Dobson: Well clearly the priorities, typically what happens, at least for me is I’ll think about priorities and then I’ll do the easiest ones first, or I’ll do the ones that are least distasteful first. Minette Riordan: Which is the opposite of what I think Brian Tracy teaches, eat that frog, which is that you’re supposed to do the hardest stuff in the morning when you’re fresh and get it over with. Brad Dobson: Right and then typically the distasteful stuff will slide down the list further. Minette Riordan: Days and weeks. Brad Dobson: Other easy stuff gets into higher priority stuff. This is where you need to, once again, do a little bit of analysis. It’s okay, that’s not a bad thing, it’s not a scary thing. You need to think out how long a task is going to take and you need to think about what order things need to get done in. Certainly if you have other people that are waiting for the results of a task, those are some of the things you want to do really early on. You want to do bigger structural things early on, but you do need to sit down and think about priorities and make sure you’re pulling the right things off your task list at the right time. Minette Riordan: Yeah and it’s really understanding that every project in your business is a step by step process and when you get clear about one step, then sometimes those next steps that may have seemed muddy or unclear will become clear. What happens with creatives so often is that we’re totally visionaries. Brad and I both can see all the steps out in front of us and it can be kind of overwhelming when you have this beautiful, bold vision and yet where you’re standing is a heck of a long way away from that vision and you’re trying to figure how to leap frog your way over there. Well you can’t. Brad Dobson: A lot of digging. Minette Riordan: A lot of digging, it definitely takes a lot of digging. I think two episodes from now we’re going to be talking about your mindset and how your mindset has everything to do with your productivity. We’ll save that one for another episode. Priorities, there’s been some great articles I’ve been reading lately around the distinction between urgent versus important. Sometimes we tend to do the urgent things but they aren’t necessarily the most important things. One way to prioritize your tasks is to simply ask yourself, “Will this help me make money?” Brad Dobson: Right, yeah. That’s a great one. We have a tendency, especially with bigger projects, to lose track of that when it may be just that you need to run a promotion today. Minette Riordan: Yeah and it’s so easy as creatives, ask Brad he’s been having to live with me for 25-ish years now, right. I’ve always got a creative idea or a creative project. In fact my son was texting us yesterday. He’s like, “Hey mom, can you talk?” I’m like, “I’m at the beach. Phone coverage isn’t that great.” We have this long text conversation he’s like, “Do you want to co-create a Taro deck?” I’m like, “That’s a cool idea. Why a taro deck and not a Oracle deck?” We had this whole long conversation. He and I already have co-created a coloring book, he helped design our planner, the Artful Profit planner as well. It was so easy for my mind to go down the path and instantly start wanting to immediately create the whole plan, design the artwork, and I was so proud of myself I gave him tasks. He’s doing the whole first part. Brad Dobson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How can we simplify our task lists? Minette Riordan: We teach a process, I think we’ve probably done a whole episode on this before but it feels like this is a good time to reiterate what we love to call the big six. It’s part of our artful profit planning system that we teach, which is when you have those big goals in place, when you’re clear about what the projects art that you’re working on, that really you should never have more than six things on your to-do list everyday. This can be a combination of personal and related to your business. The key is that you commit to doing those six things everyday before you go to bed. Literally you’re not allowed to go to bed until you check them off your list. Brad Dobson: Good stuff. That makes it simple. Minette Riordan: Do you want to add anything to that? You’re kind of the keying of the long to-do list. Brad Dobson: Yeah and I definitely have a tendency to get too many tasks out there in front of me, but the big six is a great way to limit that. It’s almost to the point, because I use a fairly complex planning system for our projects called [Gero 00:19:27] which does agile planning and all this cool stuff, maybe use [Asana 00:19:33] or [Trello 00:19:33] one of- Minette Riordan: We’re going to talk about all those in a minute. Brad Dobson: Right one of a million different things. It helps to be able to fold up and hide away other tasks and other projects so that most of these tools have a way to view a certain subset of things and that type of, maybe that’s a little hint that you could use to limit the overwhelm when you see all the tasks out in front of you which is something that I struggle with. Minette Riordan: We do think that it’s important to be able to see all the projects, all the tasks, all the to-dos, the home projects. You need a master list somewhere of all of those things but you don’t need to look at the master list every single day because that’s where you get overwhelmed, where if you take that master list and you pull out just six next steps every day, I don’t care if you put them on a sticky note or if you use Gera or Trello, Google Keep, there’s lots of different ways to do that. Brad Dobson: She’s got a note here that says, “Ditch the sticky notes,” and then she just brought up sticky notes again. Minette Riordan: I did and I’m going to talk about ditching the sticky notes here in a minute. I shouldn’t say ditch the sticky notes, because you know I love sticky notes, but there’s a productive way to use your sticky notes. We can go there next. The last thing we wanted to talk about, let me just re-cap because I feel like we’ve talked a lot about different things. From our perspective, the reason a to-do list doesn’t improve productivity is because it’s generally a laundry list of everything that’s in your head. It’s not focused, itemized, or prioritized in the order in which things need to be happened. It’s just a brain dump of everything that’s in your head. Brad Dobson: Stone tablets. Minette Riordan: Well then you would spend more time making the list than you would doing the work. Brad Dobson: Well this is true, unless you had a scribe. Minette Riordan: That’s a fun idea. Can we hire a scribe? Brad Dobson: Yeah. I think there’s an 1-800-hire a scribe. Pen and paper obviously is the first and simplest version of this. You’ve got your journal or your giant piece of butcher block paper, whatever it is. It’s just you or a couple people, that may be easily sufficient for you. You can take that all the way from pen and paper to your bullet journals, maybe you’ve got your favorite planner system that you just love. There are some beautiful ones out there and it’s almost like planner porn right? They get you. There’s gorgeous stuff. Minette Riordan: Yeah the whole bullet journal thing is definitely planner porn for me. Brad Dobson: Yeah, right. That’s okay. If it works for you and it gets you excited about the planning and the organization and you can geek out on that, more power to you. Anything that works for you is a great deal. Minette Riordan: I’m a paper planner and Brad and I both use just cheap, and I buy them when they’re on sale at Staples, one dollar spiral bound high school notebooks. We use those for a lot of our daily note taking for our planning meetings and our big six to-do lists. We also have our artful profit planner which you can download for free at artfulprofitplanner.com. You can use that to track your big six as well. I love big sheets of paper for planning but not for tasks because it’s not portable. I personally need something that’s really portable and that I can walk into Brad’s office, walk onto the back porch, we did some work at the beach yesterday. Just that noticing what makes sense to you. Brad Dobson: I think my tasks, there’s a flow to this. I’ll start with ideas either in a journal, maybe in a mind map usually some mind map software. Minette Riordan: That’s a great resource. What’s the one that you like, is it Simple Mind? Brad Dobson: I like Free Mind. Those are wide ranging- Minette Riordan: They’re more like planning tools right? Brad Dobson: Big scope, 1,000 foot view type of things. Then I’ll take those, or I’ll do a quick capture in Google Keep, so actually my spiral notebook has gotten a lot less use since I’ve started using Google Keep, because it’s easy for me to, using my phone or my computer, put ideas into Google Keep and be able to search them and all of that stuff, add links and pictures and things. Maybe I’ll take things from a 1,000 foot view to a 100 foot view at that level. Then once I’m ready to actually do a project, I can do something more formal with our project plan and put stuff into [Gera 00:25:52] which is our task management system, or my task management system that I like. There’s sort of a flow of things that can happen there. Personally I’m really not a fan of using paper for anything that we’re actually committing to, because it gets lost. Especially when people like her who have the messy desks, like her post today. It really gets lost. Minette Riordan: Yeah, well he thinks it’s lost. It’s just not quick to put my hands on sometimes. Brad Dobson: I’m not a fan of those but if you can make that work, great. Minette Riordan: Yeah which is why I’ve learned never to use individual sheets of paper but to use a notebook and work in only one notebook at a time. I think this was a big mistake I used to make is I’d have a notebook in my purse, I’d have one that was floating around on my desk, I had my tablet. I was taking notes in multiple different places, so I’ve learned to take all of my notes in one notebook until the notebook is full. Then I have a record of the notes, I have a record of the tasks and the to-dos and the content and the brainstorming and everything. Again, it’s finding the system that works for you. Brad Dobson: I did, and there’s a lot of people that are real fans of that and I understand why. It’s much more of a left-brain- Minette Riordan: Right brain, creative. Brad Dobson: Right brain, yeah yeah. Minette Riordan: It’s very visual, very colorful. Brad Dobson: Visual and flow and you can share things with people. That may be a great one for you to use. Minette Riordan: I wanted you to talk about the Way of Life one. Brad Dobson: Way of Life, it’s a little bit of a different animal. It’s for tracking habits daily. You can setup a bunch of different habits that you want to make sure that you complete everyday, which is an important part of productivity. It’s cool. It’s on IOS. I’m not sure if there’s an Android app. Yeah Way of Life is neat and it’ll give you history. How many days did you get with how many of those habits did you actually make happen. Minette Riordan: Then I wanted to mention Toggle as a great productivity app as well, we’re big fans of doing a time audit. If you’re consistently underestimating how much time projects and tasks will take you, I recommend you use Toggle. You can use it on a desktop or you can use it on a smartphone or a tablet. A Tracker, the letter A, capital A Tracker is another great one that are great time tracking apps that will help you get a better sense of the flow of how much time it’s taking you to get tasks done because sometimes the reason that you feel like you’re not getting enough done and that you’re listening to podcasts like this one going, “How can I be more productive?” Is because of this problem of not really knowing how much time you’re spending on particular tasks. Brad Dobson: Cool stuff. Minette Riordan: We got one last piece. As most of you know by now and been listening, we have an awesome quiz called Discover Your Unique Productivity Style, if I can remember the name of the quiz, the UPS quiz. In this we have four different types, the commander, the contemplator, the conductor, and the creator. We thought we’d give you just a quick snapshot of how each of the four productivity styles approaches tasks. We’ve given you a lot of different ideas, we’ve shared how we personally connect with task, which is very different from each other and we have completely different styles. We thought we’d share with you how that flows from the perspective of the different styles. Brad Dobson: Right. Our different styles were the commander, the contemplator, the conductor and the creator. The commander wants results now, so focus on getting as much done as possible in a short period of time. Minette Riordan: They’re actually great with tasks and they tend to plow through. Commanders are also really good at delegating tasks to others so that they can stay in that place of vision. They’re really good at motoring through and getting things done. Their natural preference is for working on big vision than small items. Brad Dobson: Right. The contemplator thrives with a step by step plan and tasks their time to get tasks done right the first time. Minette Riordan: You want to say something about that, because you are so the contemplator and that quality. Brad Dobson: It’s pretty clear. Minette Riordan: That quality piece though. The contemplator is about getting it done right the first time instead of wasting time. Brad Dobson: Yeah, not a fan of that. Minette Riordan: Yeah, yeah. Brad Dobson: Of course the, it’s a double edged sword because I run into perfection issues that way. Minette Riordan: The conductor tends to be really reliable and they’re great at getting things done but they have to be on a to-do list because remember what contemplators love more than anything are people in relationships. They’re very focused on connection with others around them so they can completely lose track of getting actual work done because they’re focused on taking care of everyone else. If you are a business owner and you know that you’re the contemplator, excuse me the conductor, and that people and relationships are super important to you, consider having some kind of really simple system for managing your tasks so that you’re making consistent progress and time blocking is going to be really powerful for you, to make sure that you’re blocking time out of your calendar from people so that you can get your work done. I definitely struggle with that. Brad Dobson: Right, and finally our creators. They prefer to go with the flow and do what feels fun or desirable in the moment, which is a struggle for people that aren’t that way. Minette Riordan: Yes it is. Brad Dobson: It’s hard to keep them on task. Minette Riordan: It is. In some ways Structure and Flow is all about those creatives who love to be in that flow moment, but what creatives who are the creator type, remember all of us are creative in our own way and I think it’s an actual disservice to say that all creatives are unproductive, messy and don’t get things done and distracted. Creatives actually get a lot done they just don’t do it in the same way as anybody else does, right? Brad Dobson: This is true. Minette Riordan: The creator personality or productivity style, in particular, needs structure to actually increase their flow. They will thrive in structure as long as they can learn to manage their task list in a way that is consistent and reliable and very visual. The more colorful the better for the creators. Brad Dobson: Good stuff. Hey do you want to talk about our three part video series, The Productive Creative? Minette Riordan: I do. Oh my gosh, as my step dad used to say, “Heads down and tails up,” like a very busy digging dog, working on a brand new, free online mini course called The Productive Creative, how to go from overwhelmed and distracted to clarity, is that right, overwhelm and distraction to clarity and confidence in three easy steps. It’s a three part business series where we’re doing an in depth look at everything you need to do to get your business on track, feel confident, and increase those sales. Brad Dobson: Totally free, get rid of that uncertainty in three simple steps. You can see the link to that in the show notes for this or in a bunch of our different emails that you’ll be receiving as well, and also on our Facebook page. Minette Riordan: If you’re not on our list and you want to be, you can just go take the quiz, the Unique Productivity Style quiz. Too many P’s today. At pathtoprofitacademy.com/upsquiz. Brad Dobson: All right guys, it’s been fun. Minette Riordan: See you next time. Brad Dobson: Thanks for listening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. To find out more about this episode and others, go to pathtoprofitacademy.com and click on the podcast link.
I got her vision back from her this morning with a, “This is where I get stuck, is not knowing how to go from vision to action plan.” I think this is something that you and I actually do really well together is that we’re able to take a vision and break it down into what are the step by step, day by day tasks that need to happen to make that vision come to fruition.
These to-do lists are rarely sorted in terms of order of importance, they’re rarely sorted by tasks. For those of us that work from home and have home based businesses, we often will include personal and business to-dos on the same list. It’s sometimes a lot easier to go do the laundry than it is to make sales followup calls.
Often times the things on your to-do lists are projects. They’re actually not tasks or action items, they’re whole projects like for example maybe for months it’s been on your to-do list, “Build my list.” This is a common thing we hear from all our clients. “I need to build my list.” Building a list is an ongoing, consistent project that needs to happen in your business. There’s a million and one ways to build a list so how do you get started is by really understanding this is a project, and creating a project plan that then gets turned into a set of daily tasks. It’s really learning the different types of planning that go into improving productivity so that you’re going from your annual goals to quarterly plans to monthly goals, all the way down to, “What can I do today to move me one step closer towards my goal?”
The thing that I know after 17 years of being in business is that it is day by day, step by step, break it down. The more you break it down, actually the faster your momentum can build. We get frustrated because we can see what’s possible. One of my favorite books is called Three Feet From Gold. It’s a great story about how these two father and son owned a gold mine, and they invested everything they had into purchasing the mine and the equipment to mine for gold, all the digging equipment. They ran out of time, they ran out of energy, and they ran out of money, and so they sold the mine for a very cheap price, totally ate their lunch on the mine but somebody scooped it up, dug three more feet and hit gold. This is the thing about business is that it takes patience, it takes perseverance, I think more than anything it takes consistency.
I told him, we’re going to Nova Scotia in August for vacation for a couple of weeks, and I love having a creative project. I have another Oracle deck, my core values deck that I created one summer in Nova Scotia and, “Oh this will be a great project for Canada.” What it allowed me to do was take it, it’s not urgent, it’s not important, and it ain’t going to make me any money anytime soon, so it’s not important right now. The only thing that matters is this launch that we’re working on.
If you’re not getting them done, either there’s too many things on the list, the tasks are too big and you completely underestimated how much time it will take, or maybe you’re just not going to do them or you don’t know how. I mean there’s reasons we get stuck. There’s something about minimizing the task list on a daily basis that helps create deep satisfaction, because you only have to check six things off, but it also creates massive momentum because you’re steadily making process every single day towards specific goals whether that’s a new habit, like meditate daily, or some days you just got to do the laundry because you’ve got no clean underwear. There are days like that. Some days it’s those sales followup calls are the most important thing you can do that day. Getting really clear about no more than six items on your list every single day.
That brain dump has tremendous value, and we recommend doing that at least once a week, getting everything out of your head, onto paper where you can see it or into a spreadsheet or a Google Keep list, whatever you like to use, but getting it out of your head where you can see it. Then on your day to day task list, having no more than six things that you’re working on every single day. This is our secret for really simplifying what we’re getting done. It doesn’t mean that you only get six things done. Usually you actually get a lot more done, but you’re guaranteed to get the six most important done. The last piece that we want to share with you today is how do you store and keep track of your tasks and your to-dos.
The reason I wrote down ditch the sticky notes is because sticky notes, I use them inside my journal to add additional notes or things to remember or to check or I add an addendum to my daily list. If you’re only using sticky notes to remember habits and tasks that need to happen, the problem is they can look very messy and cluttered. In fact, I just did a Facebook post today about clutter and I think we did a whole episode about clutter as well. Also sticky notes get lost, they fall off, my cat likes to play with them. Holy cow she’s been crazy with the paper lately.
Some of the things that we use or we’ve tried is we love Google Keep. I use it a lot for research, if I’m researching a topic I’ll set up a Google Note to track all the different articles, references to books or information that I found. We use Google Sheets for lots of different things. It’s for our editorial calendar for tracking tasks for our editorial content. We use that a lot. You tried [Trillo 00:27:35]
Dr. Minette Riordan is an award-winning entrepreneur with 17 years experience in media, marketing and sales. She is a lover of art, poetry and mythology and a complete geek who digs discussing how businesses work. One of her core values is continuous improvement; she is a seeker, wanderer and adventurer who loves dragons and coffee. Most days you can find her supporting her creative clients to build profitable businesses. And on other days you can find her in her art studio covered in paint.