Anyone who would like to put their personal finance in order must have daily, weekly, monthly or annual goals. Your daily or weekly to do list should go towards meeting your monthly or long term financial goals. That way you are sure that you are taking specific actionable steps each month, each week and each day, to grow your income and achieve your financial goals. Gina Trapani in her article, the art of a doable to-do list, sets out eight steps of how to make a perfect to-do list. Break it down to smaller, easier-to-tackle subtasks like file the weeks receipts or write a check to your savings account Use specific, active verbs, if you want to contact your creditors to ask for an extended credit period, don’t write, contact creditors, instead write a list of those creditors and demand or command yourself to do it Keep your list short. A to-do list should be brief and manageable. Don’t crowd all the important things you intend to be done that week on Monday because you will keep giving your self the excuse to do it the next and the next day and by the time you know, its Friday. Keep it moving. While my to-do list is only 20 items or so, its 20 items that change every single day. Every day 2-5 tasks get checked off, and 2-5 tasks get added. Remember, your to-do list is a working document, not some showy look how organized I am! thing that quietly gathers dust because youre off doing real work which isnt written down anywhere. Prioritize. Make sure those most important and urgent tasks are at the very top of your list. Purge. Just like you should be able to see what tasks are top priority on your to-do list, you should be able to see what items have been on your list the longest as well. Chances are you’ve got some mental blockage around the tasks that have been sitting around forever, and they’ve got to be re-worded or broken down further. Or perhaps they don’t need to get done after all. Deleting an item from your to-do list is even better than checking it off, because you’ve saved yourself the effort. Log your done items. Like any good assistant, you want to show the Boss exactly much youve gotten done. Make sure you stow your done items somewhere so you can revel in your own productivity. Also, your done list is a great indicator of whether or not your to-do list is working: if more than 2 days goes by without a new done item? Its time to revamp your to-do list and get back to best practices. A to-do list can be written in a notebook, a diary, or any piece of paper but it is important to have a place of record where you can track what is accomplished and what is not, hence which should move to the next day’s list. This list is a simple organizational tool that reduces the ordinary clutter of your normal day and increases your overall efficiency not only in your fiancés, but at your workplace or in your business. kelviod@yahoo.com
