Recently, I’ve begun to use a Bullet Journal and it’s changing my life! The system is great for me because it offers organization and freedom to plan the way that works best for me. No more feeling constrained by someone else’s ideas of what a planner should include.
Right around the time that I started this, I was reading Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey. In one of the chapters he spoke about productivity and how he organizes his day. Since he is crazy successful I paid close attention in order to imitate him and hopefully be successful too.
This way of doing a To Do list has helped me be soooooo much more productive because it adds an extra level of organization. Since it’s done such wonders for my day, I thought I’d share it with you. There are just a few steps and you are well on your way to getting much more done.
Dump
Just write everything that you need to do in the near future that comes to your mind down. Don’t worry about any particular order, just dump it all out on paper. It’s very freeing to get everything out of your brain and onto a paper where you can see and sort them.
Classify
Now, put an “A” next to all the things that absolutely have to be done today. Put a “B” by the things that should be done today, but it’s not a disaster if you don’t get to them. Finally, put “C”s next to the things that you would like to get to, but there’s no pressing urgency to them.
Sort
With me so far? Next you are going to look at all you “A” tasks and pick out the absolute most important. Write a 1 by that. Dave calls this his A1 task, as in the steak sauce :). This is the most important thing to get done that day. Nothing comes before it. If something is trying to distract you or pull you away, just say, “No, I’m working on my A1 sauce”. That will get a few funny looks 🙂 Continue numbering your “A” tasks by importance, then do the “B”s and finally the “C”s.
Re-write
Then, of course, we are going to re-write the list in the proper order. To speed things up, I usually abbreviate things since they are already detailed in the “dump” list. If you want to keep your bullet journal prettier and would rather leave the dump list out, you can always write it on a scrap piece of paper or another page.
Finally, I use whatever extra space on the page for recording things like what I am thankful for, meal plan, budgeting, health stats, etc.
One great thing about this To do list method is that you are able to decide what’s really important when your mind is clear and you are feeling good, rather than making snap decisions on how to spend your time based on the urgency of the moment during your day
You will be amazed by how much more you get done as a parent, business owner, or whatever you do. 🙂
Now, I’ve put together a printable cheat sheet to compliment this blog post. It’s free! Fill in your information here and it will be sent to your inbox:
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