What You Need to Do Before Create To-Do List

To-do lists are one of the most important tools in making us more productive persons. But, as everything else if we use them in the wrong way, there will be a danger that can hurt us.

To-do lists tells us what we need to do today, what is most important for us and when we need to start doing something.

Because they are important tools for our productivity, we need to prepare ourselves for appropriate using them.

What you need to do before start creating to-do lists?

1. Decide About Important Things

Not all things have the same importance for you. There are things that’s more important than other. Because of that you want to have a clear vision about importance and what that means for you and your work. What you want to achieve?

You can use time management matrix for which I already talk in Prioritization With Time Management Matrix.

2. The Context of Your Tasks

Priorities can’t work without context of your tasks. What can you do where you are in a particular time? If you’re outside of your office, you can’t do things that must be done at your office.

You can’t do things without tools needed to doing such things. Can you make a hole without drill? Probably, you can’t.

Because of that, before you decide about the final to-do list you need to ensure that for each task you have everything that you need to accomplish such a task.

Use priorities to abandon unimportant stuff and put the context that will make you better organized to start doing stuff from your to-do list.

3. Ensure You Have Enough Time to do Things

Your to-do list must follow your reality. As a first thing in your reality is time that you have on an appropriate day to work on tasks that are on your list.

Even you want to finish everything you can’t do that if you don’t have enough time to work on all that things.

Because of that, before you start creating your to-do list for today, you want to think about time that you can dedicate to work on that tasks. Then, you can rearrange your to-do list to be something that can be done in that time frame.