6 ways to be more productive with your to-do list
A recent LinkedIn survey reported that 63% of professionals use a to-do list, but only 11% complete all their daily tasks. For project managers or team leaders, managing personal tasks and your team's tasks is inevitable, but it doesn't have to be painful. When used correctly, to-do lists can help you better plan and manage projects, potentially placing you among the 11% of professionals who get everything done. Here are 6 ways to be more productive when managing your tasks:
Creating a to-do list is an effective way of planning, organizing your thoughts, and completing tasks efficiently. The primary objective of a to-do list is to help you stay focused, experience a sense of accomplishment as you check off items, and avoid distractions.
When you have a new idea, it's best to write it down immediately. Having an idea pop into your mind can be distracting and take you away from what you're currently working on. Once you capture and write down the idea, your mind can return to a calm state, allowing you to focus on other tasks. During this idea capture phase, don't worry about prioritizing and scheduling; just write everything down in a convenient tool and categorize it later
One of the most frequent mistakes in personal productivity is mixing tasks with projects or goals. To avoid this, it's important to separate your tasks from projects or goals. Your to-do list should consist of steps that lead to completing a project or achieving a goal. To be more productive, it's recommended to list your items with action verbs such as "go," "email," or "explain."
The creator of the Getting Things Done system (GTD) and the researchers who have studied the "Zeigarnik effect" suggest that you organize your tasks by creating a plan for when and how to complete them. To achieve this, you can categorize your tasks as either short-term or long-term goals. You can store your short-term goals in a section named "focus," while your long-term goals can be planned for upcoming weeks or months. Tasks that cannot be acted upon immediately can be kept in a separate section named "handle later."
The GTD system recommends reviewing your task list and considering your options. It's not a problem to move items around in order of importance from day to day. Additionally, an idea that seemed brilliant in the middle of the night may not be as good when you look at it again in the morning. Therefore, it's perfectly fine to remove such items from your list.
As a Jira user, you must be aware of the process of using issues to plan, track, and report on your work. Jira issues are items that are visible to the entire team. However, to-dos are personal items that you set up for yourself, such as ideas, reminders, or steps. By adding a to-do list to Jira, you can write down to-dos, ideas, reminders, and steps that only you need to know about and link them directly to an issue in Jira.