You can find my blog post on my website here: https://secondstagegrowth.com/my-to-do-list-got-shorter/​

Or read below!

I Had 20 Things on my To Do List. Now I Have Three.

Are You a List Maker?

Hey small business owners – how do you keep track of all the items on your To Do list? Do you even HAVE a To Do List? (Eek! I don’t know what I would do without mine!)

I've seen a wide variety of methods for keeping track of tasks and action items. Some use a good old-fashioned notebook. Some use sticky notes. Then there are all kinds of apps out there to help you keep track of projects, progress, and ongoing tasks. In working with clients, I've used Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and Podio among others. Or perhaps you are a fan of the bullet journal?

My Life is Run by My To Do List

I have always been a huge fan of any To Do list – paper or online (check out some of my checklist examples on my website). And I have to admit; it's become almost an obsession. For a long time, I relied heavily on task management apps – things like Todoist, which let you create recurring items, assign priority levels, and even track how many tasks you've completed over time. Right now I'm using Apple Reminders, which does the job of keeping everything in one place across my laptop and phone.

When I'm on a call with someone and a task comes up, or I say I'll follow up in two weeks, I just stick that reminder in the app and know it will be there when the date arrives. And when I sit down at my desk at the start of the day, I can see what I assigned to myself and what I should be prioritizing.

Simple enough, right? Except not really.

Too Many Reminders, Not Enough Progress

On any given day, I typically have somewhere between 12 and 20 reminders queued up. (Today it’s 15, and 8 of those are “Past Due”). If you've ever stared down a list that long, you know exactly what happens: you start cherry-picking. The easy stuff gets done – the quick emails, the simple follow-ups, the things that take five minutes and give you that satisfying little dopamine hit of crossing something off. I love crossing things off my list!

The bigger, more complicated, more important items get pushed to tomorrow. And then the next day. And the day after that.

And that’s my problem. Using my online To Do list, I wasn't making real progress. I was just staying busy without moving my business forward.

The To Do Epiphany

This realization actually started with a crisis. A while back, the task app I was using at the time crashed, and when I logged back in, my recent lists were just gone. I had a mild sense of panic. I spent most of that day just staring at my screen, unable to make progress without my trusty list as a guide. What do I even DO without my lists to guide me?

As I wrestled with what to do, something useful happened: I started thinking about what was actually on those lists. And which items I consistently crossed off versus which ones I kept postponing. The pattern was clear. The things I accomplished were either easy to complete (yay, check that one off!) or had a firm deadline attached to them.

But the things I wasn't getting to were the big picture ones. The strategic ones. Items like "create marketing plan for online business owner roundtable groups" or "figure out how to monetize my Rise Over Run videos." Those are real goals – but they don't belong as a single line item on a daily to-do list, because there's no obvious place to start and no clear finish line for any given day.

My first step to address the big picture was to make sure any items on the To Do list were clear small actions – not giant goals. Of course that just made my list LONGER even if the tasks were easier to accomplish.

My DIY Notepad

So I did something a little old-fashioned: I designed my own paper notepad.

Yes, an actual printed-on-paper notepad. And I love it.

Here's how it works. At the top of each page, I write two things:

1. My quarterly goal. This is a specific goal I'm working toward this quarter. Having it at the top of every single daily page means I'm reminded of it constantly. It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when you're deep in the weeds of daily tasks, so this little prompt forces me to keep it front and center.

2. My Word for the Year: Each year I pick one word as a reminder of my overall vision for the year. Last year it was “Connect”, and that word had me showing up at networking events way more often than was comfortable for me. This year it’s “Action” as in “Take action and start DOING things instead of thinking about them!”

Having those reminders at the top of the notepad helps me prioritize my tasks. Then, below that, there are spaces for exactly three items – my Top 3 for the day. Not twelve. Not twenty. Three.

And of course, there are nice little boxes to check off when I complete them. Yay!

The constraint is the whole point. When you can only pick three things, you have to make choices. You can't just dump everything onto the list and hope for the best. You have to ask yourself: What actually matters today? What moves me closer to that quarterly goal at the top of the page? The uncomfortable, scary, complicated things can't hide behind a wall of easier tasks anymore. They have to be dealt with.

From To Do List to Intentional Focus

Every day I look at my super long To Do list online – which I still hold onto since that’s where I put follow ups, recurring tasks, client deadlines, etc. And then from that super long list, I pick the 3 that have to be my priority for the day.

I still use Apple Reminders to capture everything so nothing slips through the cracks. But the long list is no longer my operating system for the day – it's more like a holding tank. My paper notepad is where the real action happens.

It’s not that the long Reminders list is irrelevant, but it certainly is impossible for me to get all those things done. So I pick some combination of the most urgent (that’s easy to find on the long list) and the most important (the ones that drive my vision and quarterly goal) and add those to my paper list.

The shorter list keeps me focused – and also keeps me from feeling too tempted to just take on the short easy tasks on my bigger list. And that paper tablet allows space for me to pick my focus for the morning and afternoon, along with a reminder that I should have some down-time activities in the evening. And a final spot has “Reminders for Tomorrow” so I know where I left off or what is going on the next day.

It makes me wonder – Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It really wasn’t that hard to create a custom To Do notepad and have some printed. I even shared the notepads with each of the members of my online accountability group Your ROI Club so they can use them for their own tasks.

How Do You Move from To Do Item to Vision?

So here's what I'd encourage you to think about for your own business. Think about your actual goal for this quarter. Is your task list helping you get there – or just keeping you busy?

It can be far too easy to keep doing what we're doing, even when we know we need to think bigger. The world around us is changing fast, and if we're always reacting to the day-to-day, we never get around to shaping our own direction.

What would happen if you gave yourself permission to only commit to three things today – and made sure at least one of them moved you toward a goal that actually matters to you?

Start with the bigger goal. Then break it into pieces small enough to actually do. Then pick the right three for today.

The list will always be there. The question is whether you're running it – or it's running you!