How I DESTROY My Todo-list Every Single Day (13)
Since I started implementing this system, I've been 10x more efficient every day. I RARELY get into slumps, because this system works around them.
Now, before I get into it, be aware that EVERYONE'S DIFFERENT. What works for me might not work for you, but read through and see if some of this resonates with you.
1. Set your vision
If you don't know where you're going, you'll get caught the small tasks every day.
- Set your long-term vision
What do you want you life to look like? Who are you, what do you do and what do you have?
Be
Do
Have
Write down your long-term vision in this order, and read it every day. Add in some pictures (fx. Your ideal body, your dream car, dream house, etc). Throw in some quotes and principles you want to live your life by.
Read it every day. Seriously, every day.
This is super underrated. We all have some idea of who we want to be, and what we want our life to look like in the future. By NOT doing this, you’ll leave your future self up to chance. Do you really want to take that risk? - Set 6-12 month goals
Find out where you want the different areas of your business to be in 6-12 months. Reverse-engineer it, and find out what the major tasks that needs to be done are.
For example...
Goal:
Have a 95% automated affiliate business
Requirements:
Pinpoint all procedures in the business
Categorize procedures: eliminate, automate, delegate
Find someone a VA for low-level stuff
Find or train a media buyer to take over day-to-day campaigns
Etc etc
You can then break each of these down into smaller tasks. These smaller tasks can then be done on a daily or weekly basis (see how in the next section)
2. Front-load your planning
Don’t plan out your week or your day the day off.
- Weekly Planning
On Saturdays, Sundays (or Monday mornings at the latest), plan out your week. Look through your 6-12 month visions and pick out a handful of tasks/projects that will move you closer towards that 6-12 month vision. - Night/Morning Ritual
One of the keys to getting a consistently efficient start to the day, is to make sure your morning goes smoothly. The best way to do this is to make sure everything is prepared the night before.
My nightly ritual currently consists of:
Picking out the clothes I’m going to wear the next day and putting in the same spot
Taking a shower (so I don’t have to do it in the morning)
Putting my laptop in my bag (or putting in the place at home where I’m going to use it)
Putting my headphones next to my bed, so they’re ready for my guided morning meditation
Preparing my to-do list for the next day
Doing all this the night before doesn’t really require that much effort, and usually doesn’t take more than 10-20 minutes (the shower taking the longest). But it makes my mornings SUPER consistent.
I get up at the same time every day as well, as that makes my mornings a lot more consistent. Through experimentation, I’ve found that getting varying amounts of sleep and getting up at the same time works better for me than getting consistent amounts of sleep and varying waking times.
3. My to-do list system
Everything I’ve talked about so far flows into my todo-list system, and makes it more efficient than it would be without the preceding steps.
The todolist system I use is called Todoist.
I believe they actually have a desktop app, but I only use their webapp on my laptop (and their mobile app on my phone). The webapp is pinned as the first tab in my browser at all times, so I can easily access it by clicking Ctrl+1.
What I love about Todoist is that it's SUPER easy to create tasks, tag them, hand them off, etc. There’s a shortcut for anything you need and it recognizes everything as you’re typing out the task.
Let’s say you want to create a post for STM about productivity. It should go under the project “Growth”, it’s priority 2 (you can also prioritize tasks), and you want to do it tomorrow at 9:15.
What you would do is go over to Todoist, click Q (clicking Q is the shortcut for creating a new task) and type:
Create STM Productivity Post tomorrow 9:15 #Growth p2
Todoist will recognize “tomorrow 9:15” as the time, and will make sure that it shows up in your todo-list tomorrow. #Growth will be recognized as the project, and p2 will be the priority. If you’re working with teams, you can also click +Benny if you want Benny to take care of the task.
The reason Todoist works so well for me is:
- I can easily plan ahead and make sure that tasks show up on the right days. For example, if I need to remind myself of following up with a specific person, I can write “Follow up with Laverne 11 sep” and this will show up on my todo-list on September 11th. (I’m super forgetful, so this is a lifesaver for me)
- Tasks are much more manageable if I have a rough idea of how long it’s going to take. If all my tasks are one big clutter, it can be hard for me to prioritize and figure out which task to do next (I used to have my todo-list on a piece of paper, and this was a recurring issue)
When I plan out my tasks for the following day, I estimate how long they’ll take and fill up my day. For example
8:00 - Answer messages on Messenger, Gmail, Skype and Slack
8:15 - Check on campaigns
8:30 - Create post for STM
9:30 - Take a dump
Etc etc…
This approach makes everything flow seamlessly, and I don’t have to spend any energy picking the next task, and thinking how long it’ll take. When I’m planning out, I’m making sure that future Lyhras only have to actually DO, and not plan, estimate, etc. - Recurring tasks are SUPER easy to set up. For example, setting weekly KPI’s for my team is something I do every Monday. Instead of having to write that out every Sunday, I do it once by writing “Set Weekly KPI’s every monday 8:45”, and Todoist will recognize the date and time stamp and make sure it shows up every Monday at 8:45.
This is in a nutshell how I plan out and structure my day to make sure that I smash my todo-list out of the park every single day.
This is also something my partner and I go through in depth when we’re helping affiliates move from a tactical (in the weeds) position, to a more strategic (vision) position in their business.
You can optimize the systems to no end, but your biggest leverage will come from optimizing the person.
This is great info, thanks!
After my first $1 follow along here, I realized I was in bad need of a system and healthy routines if I wanted to make it long-term. I'm looking for info and things to implement in that regard.
I saw this youtube clip, and it really made sense to me;
It also mentions the part where you make everything ready the night before.
Derren Hardy also wrote 'The Compound Effect' which I have been listening on audio the last week. I've implemented constantly tracking and writing down how I spend my time. It's pretty shocking when you realize how much of my time is unproductive:/
Do you have any book recommendations? And thanks for writing this down. I did a bit SEO before STM, so I am pretty good at automating and figuring out tasks and so, but it's more that personal element that could use work with me
Being the disorganized individual I am, I always get amazed by how some people can organize their workflows and make them more effective... if only I was capable of this myself
Thanks for sharing your system!
This is perfect for me right now - thanks for posting!
Originally Posted by matuloo
Thanks for sharing your system!
Great stuff!
I used to-do lists a lot more when I was in other businesses that required tons of phone calls/appointments/remembering stuff, etc.
Now that I'm a (currently) solo media-buyer instead, I find I don't use to-do lists as much, but have basically lumped everything together into one big 'Campaign Log' that is for all my campaigns.
I have a little 'Executive Summary' I do for each campaign (including mini campaigns and various iterations of campaigns) at the end of each day, so I force myself to write out the P/L for it both for the current day and the day before, as well as what changes I made/what I worked on for it. I find this helps me be accountable to myself better and not 'assume' a campaign is doing well. I just do each 'Executive Summary' on the same word document, which doubles as a rough campaign log (though I don't log every change since I make tons of little shifts during the day), and a stream-of-consciousness journal, one could say.
I also keep my 'To-Do List' of things I need to do at the bottom of the document, so I'm constantly having to look at it each time I scroll down.
And then I also keep an 'official' P&L for each day/month on excel that I update every morning.
Once I (hopefully) start building out a team under me I'm sure I'll have to do more traditional to-do lists though, calendars, etc.
Also: One app I found very helpful in the past in this whole 'productivity/organization' sphere was 'Boomerang', which allows you to send emails to yourself in the future. I found that to work much better than phone calendars or reminder apps since the 'email alert' sound on your phone will always cause you to check it better than the 'reminder' alert sound, since your brain gets a more earnest jolt from the former.
Great topic!
Originally Posted by thewest
The best thing you can do while starting out is writing down everything you do, and make it into an easy, replicable checklist. This brings consistency to your campaigns, and allows you to better optimize and improve the process. And for a checklist freak like me, it also makes the process way more manageable
Originally Posted by matuloo
Well, we all work differently and what works well for me might not work well for you.
I believe we can all achieve a high level of efficiency, even if the way we get there is different.
I'd be surprised if you didn't have a good baseline of productivity, given where you're at, but my best advice is to try to notice patterns in yourself and start experimenting.
When you're working and suddenly reach for your phone, what triggers it?
What makes you feel overwhelmed?
When you're having a great morning, did you do something different the night before or upon waking?
Etc etc
@jack_l, sounds like a great system you got going! As long as you're flying solo, you don't need much more than that.
I always like to prepare for the next step ahead of time though, so it might be a good idea to start thinking about how to make your system more scaleable.
Regarding Boomerang, I kinda get the same effect from Todoist, as I get the "reminders" in my todo-list instead.
Also, I have almost all notifications off from my phone. Only Messenger notifications (as that is my primary communication medium) goes through, and they don't even notify me, it just lands on my home screen. I have 'Do Not Disturb' mode on 24/7, so only calls from my 'Favorites' in my contacts actually goes through.
This lets me dictate when there's phone time, and not the other way around.
Following along and taking action.
Just installed todoist - GREAT app!
Thanks so much - looking forward to the next post in the series!
Amy
Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app
Originally Posted by vortex
I imagine the next post will come beginning of next week
I have been thinking about this thread for a while. Good you moved to a more structured way of dealing with business/life. For me last years it has been vice versa. I was always organized and was also raised quite structured. Not per se strict but my parents learned me patterns and structure makes things easier/faster/less time-consuming.
But, it also closes down some doors. Having a certain structure makes you a bit blind too, and sometimes even lazy.
For me most import is that I stay in control, even when I take another turn on the road (sometimes out of curiosity, or out of boredom, or to challenge myself for example). Important for me is that I am conscious of what I am doing, something what was not planned/structured/organized upfront. Ofcourse this turns out into "dissappointments" regurarly, but at least I am aware of it and pick the positive stuff out of it.
My point is, don't make structuring an obsession, or at least don't let it obsess you in way you are possibly missing interesting chances.
I imagine the next post will come beginning of next week
Forgot to mention: You have my respect for being able to "Take a dump" on command!
Reminds me of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory (his Bathroom Schedule)."Being conscious of what I'm doing" <--- that is important as well, which is why I bother to use a to-do list at all. The tasks on the list serve as reminders that there's stuff that needs doing, and that's it. I'm free to move them to another day as I wish, so I'm not bound by them.
I guess in the end everybody's different in terms of what type of system would suit them best. Trick is setting aside the time to experiment - which is what @lyhras is effectively encouraging us to do with these posts. Thanks @lyhras!
Amy
Wow this is great. I need to learn from this and try. I just made a to-do list but it was so unorganized and most of it probably won't get done unless I change my approach. Appreciated.
Thanks for the post. One of my biggest failings has been working without intention. I run into trouble, things get difficult and I to move onto something else. Having a long-term vision and 6-12 month goals in place will really help with sticking with it. The people that succeed are the ones that find ways to get through the trouble and difficulties over and over again.
I just started with todoist and I love it! I used to hand write my to dos on a desk calendar and it just got messy as things didn't get done or changed. This works in the same way, but it is so much easier to edit and keep clean and relevant. Great share!
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