I have been looking into how to make the best To - Do Lists. I have found a really interesting article about the benefits of To lists and how people find keeping up with task quite hard and overwhelming. The article also lists are few examples of different organisation software people can use to help them with their work load.
Getting motivated with your To - Do List
Task management is certainly an important consideration for any designer
– freelance or otherwise. Sometimes, however our to-do lists can become
somewhat overwhelming. In this article, I would like to look at one small
change that you can make in your approach to task management to make it less
daunting and more of a motivating factor in your work.
As designers, we all need to keep ourselves organized in some manner.
For many of us, this involves using some form of task management. It could be a
complete software package for your computer, a smaller app for your phone, or
even a good old fashioned notebook in which you jot everything down.
Regardless, the chances are good that you have some kind of to-do list for tracking
the various projects and tasks that you have to complete.
The chances are also pretty good that sometimes you
look at that always growing to-do list and feel a little overwhelmed, or think
that things just aren’t getting checked off as quickly as you might like.
Well, in this article I’d like to share a little trick that I’ve found
helps approach the to-do list a bit better, and which can also help keep you
energized and motivated in your work.
The Importance of the To-Do
Before moving on, however, I really need to stress the
overall importance of the to-do list as a productivity tool. If you’re workload
is anything like mine (and I would bet that it probably is at least somewhat
similar), then you probably don’t have the luxury of working with only one
client at any particular moment. I know that some freelancers do their best to
focus on working on only one project at a time, but even then I would imagine
that there’s still a certain amount of interaction with other clients – general
maintenance, trouble shooting, content changes, and the like.
Add onto this the need to be continually working on
some of your own personal projects (something I really think every designer
should be doing), and suddenly, in addition to being a designer, you also have
to become a juggler of sorts, managing all kinds of work at the same time.
This is exactly what happened to me. When I first
started freelancing and was working only for my first client, it was pretty
easy. But then I started to get a few more clients. I launched my blog and
started to get requests for articles. Soon, my workload started to become far
more complex, and I was having an increasingly difficult time keeping
everything straight with nothing but my memory.
So, I turned to task management software. We’ll talk more about some
specific applications towards the end of this article. For now, suffice it to
say that the task management software really helped me keep everything
organized, which certainly helped with overall productivity.
The Big Problem
Now, there’s probably nothing all that startling or
revealing about the importance of keeping yourself organized with some form of task
management. Most of you are probably already doing it to some degree, and I
touched on its importance mostly for context – and just on the off chance that
there’s someone who’s not doing it.
As important as the task management and to-do lists
are, however, I always found that there was a certain overwhelming weight to my
to-do list when I first started using it. The problem I faced was really a
matter of scope. When I started into task management, I would use really
general concepts. As a result, my task list would look like this:
- Design [client] layout in Photoshop
- Code [client] layout into custom WordPress theme
- Design [client] logo
The overall list was generally pretty small, but the
individual tasks within it were huge. Designing a complete website in Photoshop
can take hours and hours of work. The same is true of coding a WordPress theme
or designing a logo. As such, I simply found that my to-do list wasn’t really
changing all that much from day to day. This in turn made me feel like I wasn’t
making any progress, and was somewhat stuck in a bit of a design rut.
And that’s never a good
feeling (whether it’s true or not).
The sub-division trick
Fortunately, we humans are silly creatures, who are
perfectly capable of deceiving our own minds, even when we are fully aware of
the deception. The solution to my problem involved precisely this kind of
deception.
Eventually, I realized that these massive items on my
to-do list were simply too big. So, I started breaking them down into smaller,
more manageable pieces. For instance, instead of just having a single entry
about creating a layout in Photoshop, I might start with something like:
- Establish a basic grid
- Create a greyscale wireframe
- Test several different background options
By using these kind of smaller tasks, the complete
list becomes larger, but also a great deal more manageable. Often I can get
one, two or even more of these smaller, mini tasks completed in a single
evening.
The benefit of this is that, while I may not actually
be getting any more work done that I was doing before, it feels like I am
getting more done, because I’m actually able to check things off on my to-do
list pretty much every day. There is just something profoundly satisfying about
completing a task, even if that task is only a small part of a larger project.
It’s even more satisfying if I can make a nightly to-do list and complete
everything that was on it.
It’s also incredibly motivating. Every time I check
something off my list, it invariably gives me the drive to get started on
something else. Plus, if I can complete everything I had scheduled for one day,
I tend to wake up the next morning with more energy and motivation to keep the
momentum of my work going.
Interestingly, all of these positive experiences stem
from the simple act of breaking larger tasks into smaller and more manageable
mini tasks, all so that I can feel as though I am accomplishing more. And,
ultimately, because I feel like I am getting more done and don’t tend to get
bogged down by the larger scope of the project, I actually do get more
done.
Just by giving myself the satisfaction of being able
to actually acknowledge my completion of small tasks, I have actually seen a
significant boost in my own productivity
Task
Management Software
As we bring this article to a close, I thought it
would be useful to offer a brief list of different task management applications
that you could use for managing your own to-do lists. If you’re already using a
different app, these might provide some interesting alternatives. If you’re not
using anything at all, then hopefully you can find something that will work for
you.
Things
Remember The Milk
Conclusion
Regardless of whether or not you chose to use one of the above cited programs or a method of your own choosing, the important thing is that you are doing at least something to keep track of your tasks. Beyond that, however, I hope that this article has demonstrated how making just one simple change to the way you handle your tasks can really help to increase your motivation and overall productivity.
It’s a small thing that can pay big dividends.
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