​The people who have got their act together, don’t get distracted easily with trivial things. But even they find it difficult to focus. The primary reason they can’t focus on the work at hand is the thought of all that work, that they aren’t doing.

The world around us is continuously changing in both predictable and unpredictable ways. You often feel that you are losing control of your work. Instinctively, you decide to make a to-do list, and aha! You feel better. You get few things done. Fast forward a few days and then you notice that your to-do list has started crumbling with the onslaught of newer work.

Don’t blame your to-do list if this is happening with you too. Instead, turbocharge your to-do list. This is how you do it.

1.     Have just one place to make your master to-do list: a notebook, a spreadsheet, or whatever suits you but just one! You may temporarily collect some tasks elsewhere, but as soon as it is feasible, put them back into your master To-do list. Don’t worry even if it grows into a monster. But ensure that it is up to date all the time.

2.     Always scan your master to-do list once every weekend to pull out what is relevant for the coming week and focus only on that weekly to-do list during that week.

3.     All that you have to do every day is to review your weekly to-do list and make a day-specific to-do list and just focus on that small list that day.

4.     Any new tasks that come should go into your master to-do list. Some of them should also into your current week list if they are relevant for the ongoing week.

Now when you are working on some task, you know that that is the best use of that time slot and the other tasks that are not being done are safe in the list and will NOT be missed or will not fall through the cracks. This confidence keeps your mind calm enough to focus on the work at hand.

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(featured image: Photo by vikram sundaramoorthy from Pexels)