Writing a to-do list is a fantastic way to make sure you don’t forget any of your pressing tasks or appointments, it’s highly useful for making everything seem much more manageable and it’s generally one of the most preferred tools of productivity gurus everywhere. Unfortunately, there’s one problem with to do lists for most of us, which is that we don’t want to actually do what’s on them – they become ‘to don’t’ lists…
If you’re like the majority of people, you will probably find that most days you complete about half the things on your list and that’s if you tackle it at all. Primarily, this is because you procrastinate for ages before even getting on with the first task. This is a problem many people face, fortunately though there is one quick solution that can help you and your to do list to work as a team and get your tasks finished in no time…
The Path of Highest Enjoyment
This idea is one that was put forward on Lifehack.org recently and it’s one that’s actually a lot more powerful than it sounds. ‘The Path of Highest Enjoyment’ simply means that you organise your to do list such that all the things at the top are the things you want to do the most. So if your to do list includes ‘cleaning the entire house’ and ‘organising DVDs into alphabetical order’, or if it includes ‘enter all that boring data’ and ‘write that article on that subject I like’, you just do the most appealing job first.
Why This Works
The reason this works is that it means you don’t dread starting your to do list and don’t end up putting it off as a result. Ordering your DVDs is a lot of fun and writing an article on a topic you enjoy is quite interesting. As such you shouldn’t mind getting started on your tasks quite so much and you’ll find you dig in a lot faster. Then, once you’ve done the first couple of jobs that really weren’t all that bad, you’ll have half the amount left to do and so it won’t seem anywhere near as daunting. Try it next time you need to work through some tasks, you’ll see what a difference it can make.