I had quite a stressful July. There was a lot going on and I didn’t know what to do. Finally I decided to fall back on my reliable dump list and put together a to do list of everything. It took an entire sheet of paper! But then, I discovered the secret that made me SO much more productive!
After I listed ALL of the things that I needed to get done, I first color coded them by category: house, personal, camping, An ADD Woman, and Face to Face, which is a charity that I volunteer for.
Then I prioritized them.
Game changer.
The prioritizing really helped. Obviously, the #1 things needed to get done first. Every time I found myself headed towards another item on the list – usually something easier – I went back and found a #1 priority item and did that instead. Way to be productive!
You can see that I highlighted the things I got done. To me, that’s encouraging to see all those highlighted items.
There are still some things that didn’t get done, but that’s OK. A few of the items weren’t due until August, and a few I just didn’t get to in time.
The important thing is that most got done and ALL of the important ones were completed.
By the way, this is something that I usually do in my planner, but I tend to only list a few things. With a list this big, I needed something with more room to write.
This was so successful that I intend to do it again for the month of August, but I am going to try to find a way to add it to my planner so that I can assign tasks to certain days rather than just relying on finding time to do them.
What do you think? Is this something you do or would try?
3 Responses
That looks amazing. My usual planning gets sidetracked with the umpteen requests from the hubby and the 3 yes I said 3 teenagers pulling me in many different directions. So my list if I’m lucky gets set aside, and I then invariably “forget” to do the important stuff. Only to hear “What’s for dinner?” Which is a problem because I forgot to take out something from the freezer. Ugh.
I can’t tell you what a revelation this was to me! I mean, prioritizing has been around forever, right, but to me, it was just too – I don’t know – nitpicky or something executive types did. I couldn’t be bothered. Wow.
I do have to say, I am not doing as well with it this month, but I don’t have the pressure on me that I did last month. Plus there’s that whole “I need a special planner or notebook for this” thing I go through.
Oh, and my dinners get planned before I go shopping and then get added to my planner by day, based on whatever else is going on that day. Wednesday is my birthday and I should have some fancy dinner, right? But no. I have 2 doctor appointments, so burgers it is.
There’s always something….
Thanks for sharing. I recently watched a helpful video by Dr. Laurie Cestnick, a neuropsychologist in MA, about executive functioning that talks about some ways to try to be productive: https://www.facebook.com/DrCestnick/videos/1932373567092501/
She has a few videos on ADHD that are helpful for parents of children with ADHD or for individuals with ADHD as well.