Using to-do lists
Why should you use a to-do list?
When you have several important tasks to do at once (for example, 3 assignments), you may find yourself thinking about the other tasks while trying to focus on one of them. This can be stressful and could result in your work not being as good as it could be.
Research into to-do lists conducted by Wake Forest University in North Carolina shows that organising goals and tasks into a list means that, as long as a plan has been made to complete it later on, thoughts of an unfinished task are less likely to distract from the task you are doing at that present time.
These will be the things that you write at the top, either in a bold colour or larger than the other sections of the to do list.
It’s so important to try and at least make a start on these as they are the jobs or tasks that you’ll keep putting off and will potentially be trickier or take longer to do. If you are having trouble knowing where to start, try to break them down into smaller more manageable tasks.
If you start with the biggest task then everything else seems so much easier to finish.
Sectioning your tasks means the list doesn’t seem too big. You may want to colour code these sections, and anything you can’t finish that day, move over onto the next day’s list with the same colour.
The list is something to help you, it’s not there to make you anxious or nervous, so concentrate on what you can achieve. If you find yourself not completing your to-do lists think about why that is. Do you need to stop procrastinating, or are you setting yourself too much to do and need to work on your time management?
It can be very hard to start using to-do lists productively. If you find you are making a list and not getting much of it done, try writing a ‘ta-da’ list at the end of every day.
This is a list of everything you have done in that day, a lot of which probably wouldn’t have been on your to do list. Use this as inspiration to start afresh the next day and give it another go.