Building a Smarter To-Do List

Merlin Mann at 43Folders has posted a good article on how to improve your to-do list. He made two parts on this article. First, he mentions one of the many problems that coming from to-do list is the lack of action oriented task – the vague phrase and lack of action words on each task list. Merlin talks about how to phrase your task right and clear, so that you can just pick the right thing to do at the right time. On the second part, he talks about procrastination, and how to overcome it by urge yourself to do it now, understand the to-do is your commitment and some quick tips on how to move on from procrastination:

In my own experience wrangling life’s entropic challenges, some of my best gains have come from maintaining a smart, actionable, and updated accounting of all the things I’ve committed myself to doing. While the quality of that list may vary from day to day, it’s the best place to train my focus whenever things are starting to feel out of control. In fact, the health of my to-do list usually mirrors the health of my productivity (as well as the barometric pressure of my stress). On the good days, my to-do list has a living quality that helps guide my decisions and steers me through unexpected changes in priority or velocity. And on the crummy days, it becomes the likely suspect when I need to quickly reassess the state of the union and make changes…

Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I
Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part II – [43Folders]