Make a simple, daily to-do list

04/02/20 • 8 min

Simply Convivial: Biblical Homemaking, Homeschooling & Mom Life—Without Burnout

Have you ever been frustrated trying to use a planner? Have you ever worried that you spend more time writing in your planner and decorating your planner than actually doing what that pretty plan tells you to do? Let me share my quick planner hack that streamlines the process and keeps me focused on the most important things to do each day. Let’s dig in.

I know, planners are pretty. They’re fun. But a lot of the ones that we can buy pre-printed, packaged, ready to go are actually over kill. They contain sections and questions and areas that maybe (maybe!) work for the person who designed it and implemented it, and maybe they work for some people, but just because a tactic or a format works for one person does not mean that it’s the thing that will work for anyone and everyone.
Instead of searching for and continually trying for that planner that will magically, suddenly make us into planners—not just make a plan but then do the plan—we need to find planning strategies that are simple, streamlined, and personalized. And that’s the planner hack I have for you today.

Try to figure out what you need to make a consistent daily plan that actually works. We have to think about what the point of it all really is. Why have a planner in the first place? Why write things down? And you’ve probably thought about that already, maybe in the spirit of ‘Do I have to?’ or ‘What’s the point because I seem to just be wasting my time?’ And the reality is that a lot of planning is wasting time, but that’s because of the kind of plan that we make and not that all planning is always a waste of time.

When we make plans that are based on wishful thinking that’s a waste of time. We need to plan for right now, our current reality, our current responsibilities, and then our plan will be effective. I think that a good question we can ask is, what’s the least amount of effort that I have to do to create an effective plan, a plan that I will use and follow through on? And my answer to that question is all you need is a post-it note!

Using a post-it note to make our daily plans helps us remember that not only our time, but even our energy and our attention, our abilities, are limited. We can’t do everything that we might be keeping on some other to do list. We have to pick the things that are most important. And then we write down the things that are most important on a small piece of paper that we can keep in front of our face. Then we are more likely to follow through on tasks because they’re not vague, nebulous “I coulda, shoulda, some day do this thing.” We have specified and written down and thought about what it is we actually have to do.

So, on your post-it note every day, at the beginning of the day or maybe at the end of the day (the day before) write down your top three things. That’s a hard thing to do. It’s a skill that we have to practice. And we will get better and better the more we practice it at choosing what those top three things really are.
But the exercise of having to choose, having to narrow it down and pick three, is all a part of what makes it actually work because the best planning is mostly a thinking exercise. It’s not that in writing something down it’s more likely to happen. In reality, it is having thought about it and putting our priorities and what we need to be paying attention to top-of-mind and visible in front of our faces that makes it actually able to happen.

Our minds are for thinking and we need to give ourselves the time and the prompts to actually think about what’s most important just today. And the daily card (or post-it note) is an exercise that helps us do just that. Because we are limited—we’re limited in time, we’re limited in resources, we’re limited in energy—our to do list also needs to be limited.

And the tiny size of a post-it note is a visible reminder of that. Writing what needs to happen out by hand every day helps us focus on our priorities. It allows us to adjust the plan as needed as life unfolds. And it puts our responsibilities right in front of our face. The great thing about a post-it note is that it’s sticky. I can put this on the top of the computer monitor. I can put this on the front cover of my planner so that it’s right there. I can put it on the back of my phone and have it right with me in my pocket.

A post-it note is super flexible and can help us keep our priorities visible. And that’s really key because a planner (no matter what kind of planner) will not work unless you look at it!
So, I challenge you to try out this quick, simple, cheap option for your own daily to do list. Try it for at least a week. Give it a fair shot. Practice and see what happens.

Over at Simply Convivial I’ve put together a Daily Card Quick Start Guide that will help you get going with this small, simple habit. It will teach you how to make and use this card (or post-it note) every day and give you a checklist so t...

Previous Episode

Decluttering once a week is all it takes.

Transformation Tuesday is our answer to the complicated, overbearing cleaning and organizing checklists out there.

You don’t need to clean by someone else’s schedule.

Instead, see what needs to be done in your own home, and spend 10 minutes improving the order and organization there.

Transformation Tuesday is one of my little homemaking mottos that helps me tackle housecleaning in small bites and tame my attitude at the same time. Cleaning and decluttering should just be a small piece of your weekly cleaning routine.

When we wonder how to organize our life, we usually think about containers, labels, and homes that magically stay clean without further effort. But someone who is organized is someone willing to continue taking the effort of homekeeping, to maintain the work consistently.

Transformation Tuesday is a catchy reminder to spend 10 minutes once a week cleaning or reorganizing a small area that will positively affect at least your peace of mind and maybe even your personal productivity.

No one can tell you what that area ought to be. Each week you pick the thing that’s bothering you, that’s holding you up, that’s the biggest (small) problem area. Each week you take just ten minutes and make an improvement in order and tidiness in that small spot.

This accomplishes more than just the small amount of order. It also, gradually, changes our perspective and attitude about organization itself.

When organizing an area is no longer a huge, overwhelming, whole-closet or whole-house project, but just a ten minute focus, we overcome our mental and emotional hurdles to becoming more organized.

We aren’t going for night and day or for whole-new-self change. We’re just going for 10 minutes of better. We succeed at that. We appreciate the difference it made. We are less devastated when the work is inevitably undone by normal, everyday entropy. After all, it was only ten minutes. We can do that again.

And when you do, take a before and after picture! Share on Instagram with the #simplyconvivial hashtag and tag me. We’re forming an open, honest, real-life community of homemakers who spur one another on to cheerful attitudes and good work at home.

Next Episode

How to keep your to-do list short

We all know the feeling. There’s just too much to do. Do you ever feel like the more you have to do the less you actually get done? That’s a real thing. There’s a reason for that. And it’s decision fatigue. The first step that you have to do to prevent decision fatigue and then to get started is decide what to actually do next. It seems simple but it can be hard. The more options there are, the more that’s rattling around in your head, the more thought and energy it takes to come to a conclusion and just get started.

Let me show you how to streamline the decision-making process so you can do what needs to be done no matter how long or short your to do list is. Let’s dig in.

So, let’s figure out how to make our to do lists short and simple, so we can actually get them done each day.

Step one is that you actually need two to do lists.

One is your master list. A running list of all the things that need to happen; big or small, routine or not. Everything that needs to happen needs to be written down and kept. But that’s not your to do list that you actually work from day to day. Think of it like the safe-keeping place so that you’re not keeping track of everything in your head—you’re keeping things safe and written down where you can refer to it as needed, jog your memory, where you’re not afraid you’re going to lose something or forget something.

Then, you need the actionable daily to do list. You can choose from that master list what goes on today’s list, but the list that you’re making for today is short. It’s prioritized. It’s a list of what’s most important today. Sometimes that’s going to be something that’s not even on your master list. Days are like that. Keeping a daily to do list allows you that flexibility you need to adjust to real life as it unrolls.

Your daily to do list then is a prioritized list. It is not even all the things that you will do. It is your top three things for the day, the three things that, if you do those it’s going to be better tomorrow. The three things that are going to make a difference. It’s easy to get distracted of the little things that pile up but then we end up never getting to those important things that aren’t necessarily urgent.

This short daily to do list is where we make sure that we do not lose sight of what’s important in our days. Now, we need to keep this to do list short because we don’t have unlimited time, we don’t have unlimited energy either. So, we have to choose. We have to make tough choices and then we need to write them down so that we can stick with those choices.

And we make this list every day because every day our time is a little bit different—the time we have available, the kind of energy that we have available—and so we can look at what we actually have by looking at our calendar, looking at our commitments, and we can choose what’s most important.

Sometimes, appointments might take up all day and so we don’t want to write a list that assumes we’ll be able to get a lot of home projects done. Or maybe even any of our routines done. Our daily to do list is made in light of the reality of today.

It takes practice and experience to know how to pick a viable, realistic top three. It’s not something that anyone can tell you what you should pick. It’s something that you have to think about, figure out, try, experiment, iterate, and continually learn from your own experience by evaluating how it went, making observations, and moving forward in light of what you learn. In this way, with this daily practice of learning how we work, learning what our real responsibilities are, recognizing what we tend to procrastinate on, and seeing what’s really important.

In this practice, over time, we make better and better choices. And, because those are self-determined choices that we know are realistic and necessary, we also grow in our self-motivation and momentum and follow through in actually doing them. And that’s really what we’re after.

So, you need to identify your priorities. That’s hard to do but you’ll get better at it with practice. So, practice every day and write three to do’s down on a daily index card.

You will, of course, do more in a day than the three things written down on your index card, but if you start with what’s most important, you’ll feel better about how you’ve used your time and you’ll probably even get more done in the long run because you’re focused and clear. You’ll see you’re spending your time well.

We tend to waste more time in distraction and indecision when we aren’t working from a clear list. So, give it a shot. Try it out. And let me know in the comments below how it’s working for you.

At Simply Convivial we do not believe in one-size-fits all plans. I’m all about teaching you the principles and the skills that you need to figure out what’s going to work for you in your particular situation with your particular needs.<...