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Today on the podcast we are getting super practical with how to create an effective system for getting things done. We go over the four parts of an effective system for tackling your to-do list, which includes a brain dump, separating tasks into specific lists, organizing those lists in a project notebook, and setting up weekly reviews and daily planner checks throughout your week.
If you have felt a little lost on how to reach your goals and dreams, this is the episode to listen to get started. This is part of our series on getting things done from a godly perspective. Be sure to check out our store for PDF printables so you can create your own system for getting things done.
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S1E39 – What You Need to Know When Studying Theology – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast
In this post, we are talking about what you need to know when studying theology. We cover 10 basic presuppositions to make sure that you get the most out of your study.
Then, we look at some concerns and pitfalls that believers often fall into.
We need to remember this: Studying theology should draw us closer to God in worship and humility. We have to get our hearts right to rightly study theology.
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Read the full post here.
I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here.
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Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.
Hey everyone and welcome to A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. I’m Cayce Fletcher and this is episode 22 of Season 1. We are talking all about goal setting from a godly perspective on the podcast.
In our last episode, we focused on dreaming big while setting your goals. We talked about the difference between habits and projects and the importance of setting goals for both habits and projects in order to keep your life moving forward “in the direction of your dreams”
Today, we are talking about how to get things done. We are going to focus on giving you some practical tips for gathering up all the tasks that you need to do to accomplish your goals and dreams and then give you a system for tackling those tasks one by one. This is part of our series on goal setting. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes in your feed, and while you are there, please leave a rating and review to help others find the show.
If you would like some more tips and ideas on productivity, homemaking, and discipleship, visit our blog at amorebeautifullifecollective.com. There you can find a free resource that walks you through the yearly review and goal-setting process, and another printable to create your project notebook. Now onto the show.
***If you have enjoyed visiting A More Beautiful Life Collective, please like, comment, share, and subscribe. Let’s make the world more beautiful together. This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through this link, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. It’s a win-win!***
3 Key Elements to Get Things Done
So far, on the podcast, we’ve talked about a few elements of getting things done. Of living with intention. I think there are 3 key elements to getting things done.
- Planning with Purpose:
- We can do a Yearly Review to figure out pain points and points of joy to create a theme of the year to focus our year.
- We can use this theme to guide individual goals to lead an effective, intentional life.
- Habits that automate routine tasks:
- We have to recognize the importance of habits and routines. These habits fill up our schedules and can help us make incremental progress towards becoming the people we want to be, aka meeting our aspirational ideal for ourselves.
- We have to figure out which habits to create and introduce them to our lives in a way that makes things stick.
- We have to assess and reassess where we are at to fine-tune our habits to accomplish our goals.
- Systems in place for accomplishing items on our to-do lists
Today, we are going to flesh out the last key part of getting things done which can be one of the trickiest to consistently implement. We are going to focus on how to create systems for getting things done so that we can tackle our to-do lists. This will probably lead to the most measurable outcomes. None of these elements are more important than the other, but each helps to live life with more purpose and intention.
Two Types of Tasks: Habits and Projects
Our lives are made up of two types of tasks. We have routine tasks and then we have one-time tasks. Much of our work in our homes and with our kids is made up of routine tasks, or habits. We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about how habits help us to reach our goals because they provide us with times of incremental progress toward those goals.
Habits are excellent at helping us get closer to the people we want to be, aka our aspirations. We aspire to be a person who has a close relationship with God, so we develop a habit of having a daily quiet time routine to prioritize that goal and work towards it daily.
However, not all goals can be met through habits. Because some goals can best be described as projects. Projects are one-time tasks that need to be completed, like renewing your driver’s license or painting your bedroom. Yes, they may need to be repeated 10 years from now, but really, it is just a one-time thing.
These one-time projects are what fill our to-do lists and add stress to our lives because it’s often on these items that we procrastinate. We know we need to patch that hole in the wall, but we don’t have a designated time to do that so we put it off. Before we know it, we have been telling ourselves we need to patch that hole for 2 years. It has become a daily added stress even though we are not doing anything about it. No amount of planning will accomplish these actions for you. So you need a system to determine what needs to get done and do the ‘matchmaking’ of time, ability, and task so that you can get things done when you have the opportunity.
Things like doing the laundry, making meals, and unloading the dishwasher all fall into the realm of habits. If we don’t do these habits, our world can move into a state of chaos. So, in this sense, our habits lead to a life that is more in control primarily because doing those habits requires self-control and self-discipline.
Our projects can’t be accomplished by habit because they are not repeated tasks. You can’t get into the groove because there is no groove to get into. However, figuring out a system of accomplishing projects will help you to feel less stressed because it takes off the mental load of all of the extra tasks that you have to do. So, while creating good habits will make your life feel more in control (and less out of control), accomplishing projects is what will start to move your life forward. Doing projects is what will start to get you moving in the direction of your dreams.
Ultimately, I think this is the goal we all want to achieve. We want to have the rest of our lives in control through good habits – so that we love our families well, grow in our relationship with God, have a tidy home, and live healthy lives – so that we can accomplish those ‘wild dreams’ that we hesitate to even imagine that could happen. If you want to learn more about accomplishing those big dreams, be sure to listen to the last episode of this series.
The differentiation between habits and projects is a pretty gray and permeable line. We talked about how in some cases things that used to be projects become habits as they get easier to accomplish and more routine in your life. This podcast is a good example of that. When I first set up the blog and started recording this podcast, it was something that took a lot of effort, research, and time to figure out. Now, it is just part of my weekly routine. It’s a habit. Projects almost always require more willpower than habits to accomplish, but with practice you can move some (but not all) projects into the realm of habits, thus making them easier to accomplish in the long run.
By looking at frequently referring back to some of the ‘wild’ dreams that you would like to accomplish, you can devote your effort and willpower to making your life more like what you want it to be. Over time, those things you are working on will get easier and you can continue to progress further in the direction of your dreams.
To sum it up, we want to have a system in place to do the projects to get closer to those goals and dreams that God has for us.
So how do you accomplish these projects and dreams?
We have a four-step plan for developing a system for accomplishing your tasks. This will take some upfront planning and organization, but like most of what we’ve talked about with goal setting, the upfront work pays off exponentially by adding ‘sticking power’ to your goals. With everything we talk about today, we want to make sure we actually remember the tasks and projects we’ve gathered up; just thinking about them is not enough. You want to make sure you remember all the planning you’ve done so that in May, or October, or December of this year, you can look back on these tasks and know exactly what you want to get done.
These four steps are for developing a system of getting things done. After you do these four steps, you will feel more confident and in control of your to-do lists and you will have created space in your schedule to dream up some big projects and dreams for yourself. Once you complete these four steps, you will just have to work on consistently tackling these tasks when you are able. It will be much more manageable to do this after developing this system for getting things done.
This system is adapted from David Allen’s Getting Things Done. This book goes more in-depth into this process and you can refer to it if you want more information on this process.
Getting Things Done Step #1: Gather up your to-do list with an initial braindump and perpetual inbox tray
The first step towards making a system to get things done is to gather up all the tasks you have to do. These could be things that you’ve always wanted to do, household tasks and projects, work jobs, and other tasks for which you are responsible. Some of these tasks can be large – like those big wild dreams we’ve talked about, planning a renovation on your home, or looking for a new job – but they can also be small tasks, like renewing your driver’s license or booking your dentist appointment.
The point is that you want to get all the tasks out of your brain and onto paper so you don’t have to think about it. Allen mentions in his book that often we have things that we feel pressure to do – like clean out our garage or paint the bathroom – and we think about those things every single time we go by those places. So, every day for years, we feel the stress of needing to complete a task. But, because we don’t have a designated plan to get that task done, we are just feeling unnecessary stress.
These incomplete tasks are called Open Loops. When are tasks are incomplete, they keep ‘looping’ in our brains, taking up our brain space. By completing those tasks, we are closing the loops that are open. The goal of creating this system is to close as many open loops as possible. Writing down our tasks gets the task out of our brain and into the system to be accomplished later. In other words, you are getting the ball rolling for getting things done.
Braindump. We discussed doing a Yearly Review in our theme of the year episode. While you are doing your Yearly Review, you may find that there are several tasks that are unfinished. Start collecting all of those tasks that need to be on your to-do list in one place. It can also be helpful to just get a blank sheet of paper and start writing down tasks. On the paper, you can make separate sections for different areas of your life, like your home, family, job, etc. Then you can start listing out tasks.
Set Up an Inbox Tray. Pick a designated place in your home as the catch-all for the tasks that you need to do. This is called your inbox. Your inbox should be the place for all your tasks to go. Some of these things could include bills and other correspondence. You can print out emails and work tasks. You can also write down tasks that you need to do on sticky notes. Placing your tasks in an inbox tray creates the habit of always collecting your tasks in one place. Your inbox is created so that none of your tasks falls through the cracks. If you feel like there are times when you just forget about what you need to do for others or yourselves, an inbox creates a system to fight against the forgetting.
If you have things that need to get done but are larger, you can always get a cardboard box to hold them as placeholders. This can include lots of home projects like painting, child locks, etc. Basically, anything that is a project but that is too large to fit in your inbox. Or the sticky note can serve as a placeholder.
Your goal in this step is to write down or collect everything that you need to get done. This can take a while and it may serve as a recursive process. As you think of more things that need to get done, get in the habit of making a note and putting it in your inbox tray.
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Getting Things Done Step #2: Create your to-do lists: Do Now, Waiting For, Next Actions, and Someday
After you’ve gathered up your tasks, then you need to sort them. Instead of sorting your tasks based on areas or categories of life, you should sort them by using the following categories. To set up a foolproof system for getting things done, you need to be diligent about always capturing tasks and putting them on the correct to-do list.
For an in-depth look at what these lists include, check out our post on setting up a project notebook. There are printable versions of these pdfs you can purchase in our shop.
- Category #1: Do Now
- Category #2: Waiting For
- Category #3: Next Actions
- Category #4: Someday
Getting Things Done Step #3: Create a Project Notebook to house your to-do list (and write down some routines)
Once you have gathered up all of the tasks, projects, and dreams that you want to get done and sorted them onto the appropriate list, you need to organize them in a place that will make it easy to refer back to them. I call this place my Project Notebook. When organizing my life, I need these basic items:
- A calendar
- A planner
- A Project Notebook
- (Optional) A blank notebook
I have a large wall calendar in which I put all of my family’s dates and events. I also have a planner that has checklists for daily tasks plus dates and events. I write my next actions (aka my to-do’s) for the day in my planner as well. My project notebook houses all of the lists that we discussed earlier. My blank notebook is used for my braindumps and making random lists. I carry it around everywhere and jot down ideas as I go through my days. Some of these things can be added to my inbox. Some of them become podcasts and blog posts. Some of them just stay there.
In my project notebook, I have different sections that I refer back to regularly. This is a three-ring notebook with sections which makes it easy to add and take away pages as I need to.
For day-to-day to-do’s, I would use a planner (or a digital to-do list or planning app).
By referring regularly back to this system, you are adding to the system’s sticking power. This will help you in getting things done.
Getting Things Done Step #4: Create space for the matchmaking process: Time, Ability, and Task
Once you’ve gone through this process, you will have created a robust system for capturing tasks, entering them into your system, and creating a plan to get them done. The next thing to do is… actually do the items on your to-do lists. If you use this system, fewer tasks will fall through the cracks and ultimately you will accomplish more in your life. But, you have to follow through on the tasks on your list. Otherwise, you are just wasting time. For the doers out there, this is no big deal (and you probably thought that a lot of what we’ve talked about is a waste of time), but for most of us, this is the hardest part of it all.
Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion. I think that’s true for most of us. You are going to do more of what you are already doing. So if you don’t like to get the tasks on your to-do list done and prefer to ‘chill’, then you probably won’t get those tasks done, no matter how much list-making you do. However, you can fight against that inertia through a few intentional processes and “get the ball rolling.” Once you get going, you’ll find it’s a lot easier to stay moving.
Just as with habits, to do a task we have to find a good mix between the time we have to get the task done, our ability to get the task done, and the task itself. If one of these things is out of balance, we won’t be able to actually accomplish the task. So, we have to do a little matchmaking in our lives to figure out the best way to match up time, ability, and task.
This will be a daily process. I’ve heard of different systems to do this. Some people focus on three tasks a day and prioritize those. This means they are automatically giving themselves space in their schedule to focus on just getting those things done. Others create a looping system to focus on different areas of their life throughout the week. Prioritizing specific goals can be one way to create space for matchmaking.
Another way can be to schedule tasks during your weekly review keeping in mind your time and ability. By being intentional about the scheduling of your tasks, you are setting yourself up for success. The only danger is that you need to prioritize the task you’ve scheduled for yourself. Otherwise, it could easily be pushed off to another day or get forgotten altogether. If it’s scheduled on your day, you need to do it.
For some of us, that’s difficult to do. If you have young kids or your work is dependent upon outside forces (like the weather), it’s difficult to schedule tasks ahead of time (even if you are scheduling them on the morning of the day of). Kids wake up sick. It pours down rain. The car won’t start. Things just come up. Another way to do this ‘matchmaking’ process is to write down all of your next actions for this week on a separate to-do list (like one of those yellow legal pads). As you have free space in your week, you work through the task based on what you are able to do at that moment with the goal of completing the whole list by the next weekly review session.
As part of this matchmaking system, you need to set up a time for daily planner checks. During this time, you need to go over any items listed in your planner along with your next actions list. This would be a great thing to attach to your morning and evening routine. Your goal is to add sticking power to your to-do list system so that you can refer back to it and use it to get things done.
Whichever system you choose, checking off items on your to-do list requires discernment and a little bit of gumption. Planning will help you to accomplish more in the long run.
A Blueprint for Tackling Your To-do list
After going through this process, you will have a system created for capturing tasks, adding them to your to-do list system, and accomplishing them as you go throughout your days. Some tasks will become second nature over time, thus becoming a habit or routine. Other tasks may morph into something bigger and grander as you start to accomplish some of those wild dreams that you’ve set your heart on.
With all of these tasks, you are ‘doing the next thing’ and accomplishing much for God.
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