Writing a List – Top 5 Secrets That Will Make It Work perfectly

So everything has been all over the place lately and you realized you need to write a list. Great, you are officially on the right track! Writing a list will help you stay organized and get everything done efficiently. That is, if you know how to actually write a list that works.

How can you write a list wrong?

Well, that’s pretty easy to mess up your list.

By writing a list that has too many tasks to fulfill in one day, for example, you are going to just get frustrated and leave the whole idea of lists behind your back.

A list that is not organized correctly will cause you to focus on the wrong things first, leaving important things undone.

A list with tasks that are too general will take ages to complete and again, will leave you all frustrated and just as disorganized and stressed as you’ve been before trying the list.

Writing good lists

A good list is a list that:

• keeps everything organized for you.
• Makes it easy to work efficiently.
• Helps you clear your mind.

Creating a good list is actually quite simple. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind if you want to get all the benefits of a proper list.

So here’s the 5 secrets to creating lists that work perfectly.

1. Stay away from general tasks ⛔️

General tasks are the tasks that are built of a few smaller tasks. Whenever you write a general task on your list, it will be hard to follow. The thing is, general tasks, in their nature, are tasks with a few stages. So until you finish ALL the stages you can’t cross the task off the list. That can easily lead to half done tasks, and might keep your mind occupied with things you started but still didn’t finish. In short, writing a general task on your list is useless.

So what should you do instead? break the big tasks into smaller tasks and put them on the list, one by one. This way, it’s much easier to track your progress and it helps you declutter your head.

❌ Don’t write “Do laundry”

✔️ Write “Wash the kids’ clothes” and then “Hang clothes out to dry”.

This way, you won’t forget to take the clean clothes out of the washing machine and you won’t have to keep it in the back of your mind. You even get a bonus: once you finish with the laundry, you can tick not one but two tasks! 😉

Don’t overdo it ⏳

You only have 24 hours a day, right? So don’t push too many tasks into one daily To-Do list. Be realistic and leave yourself some time to breath and relax too.

It’s okay to stay with a task undone now and then, but if you constantly finish your day with chores that you didn’t have time for, chances are you put too many things on your daily list.

❌ Don’t: put too many tasks into your daily list.

✔️ Do: put a reasonable amount of tasks in the daily list so it’s possible to complete it and stay sane.

Keep it in order 📑

Try to write the more important tasks in the beginning of your list, or have a way to mark it so that you know what’s more urgent than others and do it first. That way, if your list was too long for one day, you had unexpected things that came up and took time, or you just couldn’t complete your daily list for whatever other reason, at least you did all the important and urgent tasks you had listed for the day, and that’s already something you can be happy about after that long day.

❌ Don’t: put important or urgent tasks near the end of the list or in a way that you can easily overlook them.

✔️ Do: start the list with the most important tasks for the day or mark them in a way that draws your attention.

Fill it up as you go ✍️

Writing a To Do list early in the morning is good, writing it the night before is great, but the best is to always edit it the moment something comes up or change. Think about it, the list will make sure you don’t forget to do your chores, but if you forget to put a chore on the list… well, you don’t want that to happen.

Making sure your list is constantly updated is important if you want your list to be worth it, so always have space to add a few more lines and have your list easily accessible so you can edit it whenever is necessary.

❌ Don’t: try to remember new tasks that came up, tell yourself you’ll postpone a task from today to tomorrow, or have your list written till the last line with no space left.

✔️ Do: Keep a few empty lines to add tasks that came up, edit your daily list with new tasks and chores right away, and write in tomorrow’s list any task that you want to skip today.

Be specific 💯

Quite often, writing things in a specific way now will save you tons of time later.

• “Make dinner” = not a properly written task.
• Prepare pasta for dinner” = better option, especially if you already know which kind of pasta you’re going to make.
• “Cook pasta with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes” = the best way to put it.

That way, you are making a list that is way more efficient. It helps you declutter your mind since you don’t even have to think about it. You really just follow the list. It’s that simple.

❌ Don’t write “make dinner”.

✔️ Do: write “make quinoa salad for dinner”.

Which tip did you find the most useful for you? When do you usually write your daily lists? And what do you prefer to use – pen and paper or an app?