Just changing the words won’t make any list work use them properly. We’ve all seen the people who carry 10-pound Day- Timers with “To-Do” lists that would challenge a team of mules. The more technologically advanced have replaced the paper Day-Timers with (Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). They weigh less, but carry more stuff to do. Instead of ten-pounds, they cart megabytes of things they “have” to do.
Stephen Covey, in The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People said there our lives are in quadrants. Quadrant one is urgent and important, two is not urgent but important, three is urgent, but not important, and four is neither urgent nor important. He’s a brilliant writer and his matrix is very good. I’m proposing a hybrid of that and a “To-Do” list. It should work for disorganized people better because it requires fewer decisions. By putting both long-term and short-term goals together, we can see how they mesh together. We’re going to break our business and personal life goals apart and when we have clarity about them, put them back together again. Then our job will be to make them work together.
On a legal pad, in your PDA, your contact manager or word processor, make a list of the things you want to accomplish in your business life. Five things you know about are plenty. The third, “declutter one area,” and the seventh, “the unexpected,” are absolutely necessary. They are in the order of priorities for a reason. If we put “decluttering” at the bottom, we may never get to it. Yet, that is the major issue here.