Hello guys. And welcome back to UnJaded Jade.
I think to-do lists are one of the best and simplest productivity tools of all time.
I actually recently got to speak to Michael Williams,
who is the co-author of the book, Getting Things Done for Teens.
In this book, he discusses how our feelings of stress are often
connected to the mess in our heads.
We know we have a lot of things to do.
You know, you need to do the dishes and do your assignment
and all this massive things.
And it's kind of this gap between all the tasks that need to get done
and completing them effectively. And in that gap is where we feel overwhelmed.
This is where to-do lists come in for me. They don't require over-planning.
I've tried much more complex techniques of sorting my life out
and quite honestly, I don't stick to it.
So this is my basic simplest best way that I keep my life together.
And I hope that helps you.
Firstly, I am all about reducing friction, the friction that stops you starting a
task, the friction to just picking up your book, to going over your flashcards.
That friction. So the way I do
my to-do list is I have a three-step process and I have two guiding forces.
So my first guiding force is my high-level plan for my month.
And based off of that, my high-level plan for my week.
What's going on this month? What do I want to achieve?
What do I need to get done?
And I'm someone who doesn't just love new year's resolutions, but I try and have
monthly goals, monthly resolutions,
habits I want to track, because a year is too long and I just tend to
lose motivation past January.
But having these end of month, start of month reset is really helpful.
And I try and build my monthly goals off of my larger new year's resolutions.
And then my high level week plan is based off of my high-level month
plan using notion.
But I do think bullet journals are amazing.
Having a physical planner is amazing.
And then my second guiding force
is my university classes, my assignment deadlines and the external things I have
to get done, like literal deadlines.
So my three-step process to to-do listing:
The first most essential step is to blurt everything down, like literally everything.
This is so carthatic.
I sit for a good 5 to 10 minutes and think of every little thing that
I need to do. The kind of stuff that I wake up in the middle of the night
thinking, Oh my God, I need to do that.
You know, like getting it out of my head and onto paper or onto my laptop.
It's the writing deadline I want to meet,
the assignment I need to plan,
the friend's birthday coming up that I want to do something for,
that dinner recipe I want to cook,
the business assignment I'm going to do, different projects, emails, all of it.
All the stuff weighing down my head, I'll put it on paper.
I personally love doing this at the start of the day or at the very end of the day
looking to the next one.
It's just a great release.
You sort of see everything that you need to get done,
and then you can just be more intentional in your life.
I do this on my notion today page, really simple.
My second step is to prioritize, select, and specify.
I asses the messy list of everything that I want to get done.
And I judge their level of priority by the immediacy of deadlines,
how much I value that habit today.
Some of the tasks I blurted down will be really huge and ugly and impossible to
tackle because it's not specific enough.
So I make them more specific, more realistic.
For example, instead of saying, do some neuroscience revision,
I'd say, do this exact flashcardset on this exact topic.
And then that becomes its own task.
I think this is why I like doing on notion because it's really editable
and you can shift them around a lot.
And then number three is to allocate my to-do lists tasks to my day.
You know why you might never complete your to-do list?
It's probably because you stop at the blurt.
You make the to-do list, you know what you need to do, but you have
to realistically see how it can fit into the time that you've got.
This is why I personally get out my Google calendar and I slot stuff
into my day based off of priority.
I'm super generous with time when I time table because it's just very rough.
The idea is just to have placeholders to imagine it in my day.
And just the act of doing that in my Google calendar
really quickly makes me see
how realistic what I've got my to do list is. Like, can I actually get it done?
Oftentimes no. And then I can go back and reprioritize. And then I just do it
when the friction is gone, which is good. We want that.
I don't know if you've heard of the concept of choice architecture, but
the idea is you sort of engineer your life to make certain tasks
not really feeling like a choice.
Like it is the easiest choice because you've just prepared everything
you might as well just do it. So you've literally done the work.
You've chosen the task.
You've put it in your day.
Maybe even got out the equipment you need.
And then all you have to do is sit and do it.
And sometimes I think it's a gift to yourself.
If you know you've got a lot going on, instead of channeling stress,
you're like, cool.
I've I realized everything I needed to get done.
And now I can see it with a bit more gratitude, a bit more rationally.
You can maybe even say, I get to do these things instead of I have to do them.
And you just sit and do it.
My top to-do list tips:
My first tip is to start with a hefty task.
When you brighten earlier, or you're fresh to a study session,
you've just got the most motivation.
Literally ask yourself,
if I only got one of these things on my to-do list done, which one
would make me feel most satisfied?
What would make me end the day being like, "I'm so glad I did that"?
And I know I have certain tasks that get shoved onto the next day
almost every single day, because I just never want to do it.
And if you've got a task like that, be aware of it, notice it, and then
tackle it head on at the start one day.
And then my second tip is to remind yourself why.
Why care? Why try? Why did you choose to study what you're studying?
Why are you implementing a new habit?
Why do you want to read that book that you told yourself you're going to read?
This process always reminds me to stop complaining and just do it.
I love learning, but it's a lot. I have been thinking about my life
recently, and I don't think I've ever worked so many hours in a day in my life.
Like I just...
Most days, I really do just sit on my laptop for like many hours. And it's okay.
The habit is there. But this simple to-do list framework really helps me.
I don't like feeling stressed.
I don't want to feel stressed.
Yeah, I really hope this helps you. if you have got things to get done.
And I'm really not saying don't enjoy life, please enjoy life.
Even if you're in lockdown, you can still enjoy life.
In some ways, I think to-do listing and productivity habits
truly make you enjoy life more because you can enjoy your downtime with the
knowledge that the stuff that you have to get done is getting done. You're doing it.
And if you don't finish everything in your to do list fine, that's absolutely fine.
If anything, it's just less stressful because you know, it's all there.
You know what you've got to do.
If you don't finish everything for that day, you just slot it into the next day.
Slot it strategically in your calendar.
So, yes, if you've been scrolling for a while and there are some things you really
want to get done, whether that's reading an essay for fun that you're interested in
or writing that essay you've been avoiding, go get yourself a pen and paper
or get on notion, ask yourself what are the things I really want to get today?
Seize it. Like this is another day, but you can move yourself today
closer to where you want to be in the future.
Like today is just a stepping stone to helping future you in something.
I hope you found this useful in some way. Have a beautiful rest of your day.
And what are you grateful for today?
Mine on the casual magic of the day.
So I woke up really early today because I had an assignment due from 8:00 AM until
an hour ago at 3:00 PM. I was just doing this assignment,
but I finished it.
And then I just went to the corner shop
and I got myself, a red bean coconut milk Popsicle, like a red beans stick.
Have you ever had a red bean stick?
It was amazing.
And then my flatmate was still doing the same assignment and I got him a little
ice cream. And we just sat there eating our popsicles. And it was a good moment.
It's the little things.
Okay. Have an amazing day.
Bye!