How to Handle a 20-Item “To-Do” List

You don’t. Most people can only do one thing at a time. A few multitaskers can perhaps do two. No one can do 20 things at one time.

A “To-Do” list is possibly a good way to keep track of long-term projects or things you would like to do… some day…but it is not a good way to plan your week.

The way I see it, most work that is done is the important and urgent stuff. If you have more than one important and urgent task, then you have to decide which is more important. If you have too many, then nothing is important and urgent.

The trick is to work on the important but not urgent task before it moves into the urgent category. To get started, I suggest you work on what, at that moment, appears to be the most important thing (MIT) you have before you. There can only be one MIT; there cannot be two that are the most. To start, dedicate 45 minutes or an hour of concentrated, uninterrupted time to your MIT. When that time is up, take a short break to check on your calls, texts, emails. Then dedicate another 45 minutes to continue working on that MIT and continue that project until it is completed, and then go on to the next MIT.

Getting back to the large To-Do list you are starting your day or week with. If you end the day or week without everything on it completed, then what you have done is taken on responsibilities that are likely beneath your level. The “proof” of that is that the items on your list were pushed aside for things you felt were more significant for you to get involved in.

A different way to look at this is that perhaps you are either not delegating properly, are micromanaging, think that you are the only person who could do that task properly, thinking you are more important than you are or are afraid of competition within your organization. Whatever the reason, it is important to you, but not to the organization or your business. It affects the business, and you have to work it out, but the main thing is that you need to become more effective in managing your responsibilities.

An alternative to the perpetual To-Do list is to schedule the work in specific time slots, allowing time for interruptions, distractions and being pulled away for some sort of emergency or something very important that you forgot about when setting up the schedule. And then keep to that schedule so that work can get done. If you work on something else, then reschedule what was in that time slot. If that cannot be done, then see the previous paragraph. When working on something you blocked out the time for, put your phone in a drawer, and do not allow for any type of interruption, except a real emergency. [A sign on a client’s desk said, “Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Do not get pulled into someone else’s self-created emergency.] A suggestion is to block out 45 minutes for the work, and 15 minutes to respond to calls, texts and emails, and then back to that hour.

When scheduling that hour, you can evaluate whether that project is worth your hour, or whether it should be delegated, deferred to a later time or maybe not done at all. Setting aside that hour is a commitment to work on that project, and only that project. If it is a longer project, say something that would take five hours, you need to question yourself if that is something worth five hours of your time, or whether part or all should be delegated.

For work that is delegated, a method I use is to check in with the person doing it after 30 minutes or an hour (depending on their level of expertise) to make sure they started it the right way, and then check in every hour thereafter. These check-ins are 2-minute look-sees. If the nature of the project needs you to complete it, then set aside the half hour or 45 minutes needed for that. When that project is finally completed, you likely would not have spent more than an hour, and your assistant, perhaps five hours. This method would have added an hour to the project, but five of them are at a much lower “cost” than if you did the entire project. You then freed up four hours for other projects. Further, you taught someone something that they likely would be able to do again, further releasing some of your future time.

This works! Try it!

Here is a link to an earlier blog I posted along the same vein.