Smart To-Do Lists Get Things Done

To-do lists are great if they work. But just making a to-do list isn’t enough. You eventually have to act on it. Usually, these lists become a black hole into which everything you need to get done for your business, home, and life disappears. The result is that you end up doing nothing. But you do have that list. Isn’t that enough?

Creating a big long list starts to feel productive. It’s almost as if you’re actually getting started on a few of these items simply by acknowledging your need to do them. And finally, the act of writing a list can be so satisfying you don’t feel an immediate need to get started on the first item.

You’ve got a smart phone and a smart computer. Now it’s time to create a smart to-do list.

Keep it short. Can you accomplish two important tasks each day? A long to-do list of more than two pages can be intimidating. It’s actually better to have make several shorter lists. At first, you may think that all the items on your list have equal value, but that’s usually not the case. Limit your list to 10 items each week.

Prioritize the things you have to do. Put the important ones on your main list and the others on a secondary list. Often the items on this second list have no immediate deadline, so you can check them off as you have time to do them. If one or more of them becomes important, you can always add it to your main list.

Focus on what’s important first. Differentiate between productive tasks and satisfying time wasters.

When creating your list, use action words. Also, create a short command sentence for each item, not just a word or a phrase. For instance, “Research and write my writing blog for this week.”

Just as in your writing, you need to be as specific as possible when creating your to-do list. The more specific you can be, the better. Instead of “marketing,” write: “Identify five new markets for my articles and send queries to their editors.” The more specific you are, the more actionable your list will become. Once you know what you want to accomplish, it’s easy to make a to-do list of steps to get it done.

Use technology to create your list. You may prefer writing your list on a piece of paper. But with all the devices and special software programs at your disposal, you may want to consider trying something different. Take Evernote, for example. This neat application allows you to create notes, and, yes, a to-do list on any of several devices—desktop computer, laptop computer, cell phone, tablet—and then access them on all of the devices at any time.

Another great feature of Evernote is Evernote Web Clipper. With this application, you can save articles, links, and even full Web pages to read later. It’s better than a bookmark because you can only bookmark sites in a particular browser on an individual device. But with Evernote, your bookmarks or articles travel with you so that you can access them at any time.

The same applies to your to-do list. If you write your list on a piece of paper, you have to go into your office to read it and act on what’s listed. But with your list traveling with you, you can access it at any time and complete tasks using different devices, thus increasing productivity.

Of course, you can do much of what Evernote does on Google Calendar or on Yahoo. But saving notes, to-do lists, photos, Web pages, music, and more allows you to become more productive by making the best use of the time you have.

As you head into a freelance career, remember a large part of your success will depend on your ability to work through an ever-growing list of things to do. Creating a smart to-do list will help you prioritize what you have to do, so you get things done.

Make a List and Check It Twice

Everyone knows that Santa Claus makes a list and checks it twice before going on his merry way to bring gifts to all good little boys and girls. Most people do the same before going Christmas shopping. But I bet you never thought of making a list of not only all the places you could sell your writing, but also the different forms of writing you can sell, produced from the same research.

Too many non-fiction writers research an article or book idea, write and publish it, then forget about it. As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

First let’s look at the many types of articles you could write based on the subject matter. If you work in education, you might consider writing one for a journal in your field. But that’s pretty much a dead end to a freelance writer and either doesn’t pay anything or very little.

If you like to travel, you have a myriad of article types to choose from. There’s always the straight travel article about the places you visit, but you could write several on the adventure or sports side of those places. And don’t forget food and historical articles about them.

If you prefer a more scientific approach, you could write about new scientific discoveries and about how they affect medicine, commerce, or industry. Writing trade articles can mean steady work.

And then there’s business and finance articles. Pieces about new business ideas, new businesses, and business advice are always in season. How to market certain types of businesses is yet another approach. Interviews with top business professionals helps those on their way up.

You could also approach a subject by its effect on people. Family relationships, genealogy, art of living, and sociological influences are just the tip of the relationship iceberg.

Your second list should be all the ways you can treat the same subject. One of the easiest articles to write is the how-to piece. Combine this with the standard advice article, and you have a winner.

If you like helping others, you may want to work your information into an inspirational article.  Tell it from your own life, and you have a personal experience piece. An article told from your own insight is one of the most powerful out there. And readers love them.

Take a look at the past and put some nostalgia into your work. Nostalgia pieces are becoming increasingly popular with the ever-growing crowd of baby boomers out there. They like to remember how things used to be, even if their memories cloud over some of the bad things and make the past seem rosy.

Reader’s Digest always said that humor is the best medicine. But not everyone can write humorous articles. Just because you think something is funny doesn’t mean your readers will. Try your humor out on your friends first.

Perhaps you want to get serious and write exposés. These take a considerable more research and time, but in the end can be worth while. If the exposé is too much for you, then perhaps you’d like to try writing controversial essays, although the market isn’t too open for them. In today’s publishing world, a blog on a controversial subject will be more likely to succeed.

And for all those books you’ve read researching an idea, perhaps you can find time to write reviews of them.