Here’s why you can’t get anything done (hint: it has nothing to do with effort)
Shopping, cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, and drugs.
These familiar addictions dominate headlines and can destroy lives. But over the past decade, many people have developed a more socially acceptable compulsion: productivity.
12 Tips to Keep Your To-Do List Short but Useful
Written by Francisco Sáez
The main function of a to-do list is to organize and prioritize the tasks you have to do. Besides, they allow you to gain a certain sense of control and peace of mind, since you know you don’t need to remember what’s on it.
But if you let it grow out of control, the effect of the to-do list can be completely different. An excessive list can ruin your sense of control and become a source of stress and frustration.
It is very difficult to focus on what you have to do when your to-do list is endless. Selecting the next task to perform from a hundred possible actions is a rather overwhelming experience and, under those circumstances, you will most likely not choose the most desirable option. Let’s face it, if you have a hundred tasks on your action list, you’re not going to do them all. You will do some of them, and they probably won’t be the ones you should.
The shorter your to-do list is, the easier it will be for you to stay focused on what is most important at any given moment. Also, keep in mind that leaving a long to-do list every day generates a negative psychological effect that will prevent you from fully enjoying your leisure time. It’s as if you have no right to have fun, knowing that you still have so many things to do.
So, in order to be truly productive and keep stress at bay, you need to keep your next action list as short as possible. Here are a dozen tips to help you do that, in a smart way.
