The Official To-Do List

Image by BigBlue via FlickrIt's 3am and you've just woken up from an entertaining, yet extremely confusing dream.. you can't find any pants, but you're pretty sure you're wearing a bathrobe and it might even be on right-side-out today. You have to start effective working in less than 5 minutes or else you'll be losing precious moments that you need to use to get things done. If only you could remember what the hell that was supposed to be.

In order to hit the ground running at any given moment I find it critical to have a to-do list and to keep it constantly updated. When you are just about to fall asleep at night and your tasks are fresh at hand make sure you've captured everything you need to on your to-do list. I like to pick one task to start off with and I usually highlight it, or put a start next to it, so that when I look down in the morning all I have to read is one thing; the one with the star by it. No matter what else is going on around me, (or not going on around me) I know what I'm supposed to do, and sometimes it takes some forcing to get the hand and brains to do it, but I know I've got to do what I need to do to get it done.

If this kind of list is not present, it can sometimes take a while to hit the ground and pick up where you left off. Especially if you're groggy and can be easily distracted. To have a defined task to check off makes ignoring work much harder because it gives you a direct short term goal to look forward to.