For the past few weeks to-do lists have been working really well for me. I think it’s because I’ve just adopted a ‘new day, new list’ policy. Usually I make rambling to-do lists with a mix of long-term and short-term goals, and hold onto them in various iterations for weeks or months. They really serve as a brain dump, and are hugely helpful because I’m fairly forgetful. At least I hope they’re helpful, because I continuously make and add to them.
However, they are not very helpful for actually guiding my daily activities. At least right now, a daily list seems to be filling the gap pretty effectively, although probably I’m still letting too many long-term goals sneak onto my daily list, masquerading as achievable agenda items.
I’m only a few weeks into the new practice of a daily list, so hopefully I’ll get better at filtering my goals into long-term and short-term tasks. Perhaps more importantly, I know that I also need to get a little (much?) more realistic about the number of short-term tasks that belong on a single daily list.
September 24, 2015.
