Whenever I have a big to-do list I find myself sitting and staring at it like I’m a deer in the headlights wondering “where do I even begin?”… Overwhelmed by the question of where to begin the list almost always leads to procrastinating on starting anything on the list…and procrastinating inevitably leads to feeling down on yourself…

Going through that cycle time and time again has led me to realize that to-do lists, in and of themselves, just don’t work that well. What works far better than a to-do list is actually scheduling each of my to-do items in my calendar in their own specific time slots.

Scheduling each of them not only removes that question of “where do I begin”, but it also forces me to guesstimate how much time each specific task is going to take as I’m blocking it on the calendar and that helps to give me a more realistic view of what can actually get accomplished within a single day. And being forced to book it on a day and time naturally indicates the priority of what has to get done by when.

Try it!  Take your current to-do list and move it all into your calendar. Then give it a week and see if you aren’t far more effective in getting things done.

~Amy Rees Anderson