Crush Your Day With This Powerful System for Organising Your Tasks

<p>Having a to-do list is Productivity 101.</p> <p>It is the sacred cow of all-time management strategies. Everyone has one. Everyone thinks they need one. It is an assumption that is never challenged.</p> <p>Until now.</p> <p>So let me enter the fire and say it.</p> <p>The to-do list causes so many problems.</p> <h1>How not to use a to-do list</h1> <p>Here&rsquo;s what we usually do:</p> <ul> <li>Start the day with your list of tasks</li> <li>Cross them out as you complete each one</li> <li>New work arrives so you add it to your list</li> </ul> <p>If you have done well, your list might be shorter by the end of the day. Sometimes it is longer. But whatever happens, it is never empty.</p> <p>This is ridiculous. You&rsquo;d never do this in any other area of life.</p> <p>This approach creates 3 major problems.</p> <h2>Problem 1: It doesn&rsquo;t help you decide what to do.</h2> <p>You look at your list of tasks.</p> <p>How are you going to decide what to do?</p> <p>The to-do list itself offers no help. You already have more than you can do in 1 day. So you will turn to other ideas such as the silly urgent/important matrix or the Pomodoro technique.</p> <p>You end up doing a random mixture of:</p> <ul> <li>the easiest</li> <li>the urgent</li> <li>the important</li> </ul> <p>There is a better way.</p> <p>But let&rsquo;s consider the other 2 problems first.</p> <h2>Problem 2. It only offers demotivation</h2> <p>Imagine finishing work knowing you have completed&nbsp;<strong>all your tasks</strong>&nbsp;for that day.</p> <p>You feel content, stress-free and fulfilled.</p> <p>The traditional to-do list leaves us with a sense of failure at the end of the day. It is never completed. We lose every single day. This makes it hard to get motivated. Endless tasks don&rsquo;t energise us.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/practice-in-public/crush-your-day-with-this-powerful-system-for-organising-your-tasks-2c9ab3419770"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>