How to get on top of your stupidly long list

It's the most... overwhelming... time of the yeeear. 🎶

If you have a lot of things to do, it's easy to get trapped in the details and watch your list take off, spreading like an outdoor mint plant.

A little chaos is exciting, especially when Christmas decorations are involved. But then you reach a tipping point. You're exhausted at the end (or maybe the start) of every day. You spend hours tackling tiny tasks with no tangible output and a nagging sense that you didn't do enough or should have been doing something else.

I know this feeling well, and it's a fast track to burnout and unhappiness. When I remember to eat my own dog food, I get out my strategic planning toolkit. If you have some duality going on - i.e.

• "I'm doing everything and also nothing."
• "I'm busy and simultaneously lost."
• "Everything matters, but none of it does."

... Then you might find this helpful.

In this post:

• Too many things will see you spin your wheels.
• Nerdy strategic planning principles will help.
• Free video and step-by-step guide.

Watch this video

I've been sending you a weekly video, and you've liked it (two weeks ago: Strategy 101, last week: Strategic Planning). So, here's another: 

Read these tips

When you're dealing with your own life, you feel uniquely shameful, incompetent, and scattered. But when we put our strategy nerd hat on, we know that projects and tasks accumulate in even the most focused environments, and regular maintenance is important.

There are seven steps to take: 

1. List what you're currently doing - or considering doing.

2. Reiterate your vision and focus for the quarter or year.

3. Weight those focus areas by importance.

4. Assess all of the potential initiatives against these areas as criteria.

5. Select your top priority initiatives.

6. Create a short-term implementation plan for each initiative, including the steps involved, the time it will take, the help you need, and the key milestones you need to reach.

7. Incorporate your priorities into your calendar to guide how you spend your time.

Step 1: Write your list

Chances are, you have a long and invisible list running in your mind. This hidden list is dangerous. You can't work with what you can't see.

Start a to-do list where you write down everything you can think of – big, small, prominent, invisible, the lot. Consider keeping a running list somewhere accessible over a day or two to add to it, as you remember.

Step 2: Remember your goals

You don't work for the sake of it. You work to achieve a bigger goal by the end of this month, quarter, year - or decade!

Before you go any further, consider what that future looks like. Reiterate your goals and consider your key focus areas and objectives.

Step 3: Prioritise your goals

Your big-picture goals and focus areas are not equally important. Consider the relative importance of your objectives by assigning a weighting to them out of a potential 100.

Once you decide which goals are most important, they become helpful evaluation criteria for tasks and projects.

Step 4: Score your to-do list

Now, you can use the criteria you developed in steps 1-3 to 'score' your to-do list.

• List each task and project from Step One in the left column of the matrix.
• List your focus areas and the weighting you assigned in the matrix's top row.
• Score your tasks for alignment with/ contribution to your key focus area.

Here's a handy scoring system:

Low alignment/ contribution: 1

Moderate alignment/ contribution: 2

High alignment/ contribution: 3

Then, apply the weighting to tally the total score and pick the winners!

Step 5: List your top priorities

Your matrix will have identified your top priorities based on the highest weighted scores.

• Grouping related items
• Readjusting as required
• Timing, dependencies and deadlines.

Then, identify your top 2 or 3 priorities in more detail.

Step 6: Detail your priorities

It's time to turn your top priorities into tangible entities you can work with. Spend some time considering:

• The steps and milestones involved
• How long each step or milestone will take
• What help or support you will need
• Who else needs to be involved
• Dependencies, deadlines and connections to other tasks
• Risks and things that might go wrong.

Step 7: Make a plan

Now, it's time to consider how you can bring an overall plan with milestones into your calendar.

Allocate sufficient time each day or week to complete your priority in the target timeline, and consider who you need to bring in.

Grab this free guide

In this free guide, learn the seven steps to finding focus. Use the worksheets to help you apply them.

I hope this helped.

Til next week,

A