How to Get All Your Tasks Done

How to Get All Your Tasks Done

These are my personal tips for managing my task lists and getting all of my work done on time. I know they'll work for you, too.

1. Write everything down.

And I mean everything you will need to do to accomplish your tasks. Most people, when making their task lists, tend to be overly general. If you generalize a task that can take a day to complete, but that task is really a mini-project that requires time spent on lots of smaller tasks, then write down all those, too. You might find it will take even longer. When you write down every step needed to complete a task, it helps you get a realistic sense of how long something will actually take. And once you know that, you can move onto Step Two.

2. Prioritize that list.

Let's start with a simple color-coding system to help you prioritize. Red for "Must do" and Yellow for "Should do" and Green for "Could do."  Now go through your list and mark all the red ones first. You might be tempted to mark them all red, but if you've really written down all the smaller and medium size tasks in step 1, then you'll likely see that some of your list contains some yellows and greens. Next, look at all the greens. Do you really need to do those as part of the larger tasks or red tasks? Could you delegate some of those activities to someone else? If so, that leads us to Step Three.

3. Do or delegate.

Most of your tasks will be, well, yours. You are the one to do them. But what if you could delegate those tasks to someone else? Now is not the time to be controlling. To be successful, you need to know when you have the time or capacity to do certain activities, and when you would benefit from handing those off to someone who can help you. Go through your list now and see whether you need to be the actual task owner or whether you can speed up your list and get everything done.

That's the goal, right? Getting through your task list doesn't mean you have to do it alone. Getting help and support from your team is what they're there for!