Four Lists to Get Stuff Done

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I’ve been a list-maker for as long as I can remember. I really couldn’t live without them. I use them in every part of my life, from running my business to preparing for vacations.

Lists may seem simple, but taking a closer look and how, when, and why you write lists can have a huge impact on your productivity and organization. This is something I wrote about at length in my books, Listful Living and Listful Thinking.

I also created a LinkedIn Learning course on this topic: The Power of Lists to Get Stuff Done. I want to give you a little preview of that course so you can get started on leveraging the power of lists right now.

In this episode of Inside Scoop I walk you through a little preview of the full course.

Here are four lists that can change the way you work:

1.) The Goal List.

This is a powerful list for any area of your life, but it’s especially helpful in setting professional goals. And I don’t just mean things like “get promoted” or “write an email.” I suggest adding things like “finish the week without feeling overwhelmed.”

Writing a goal list at the beginning of each week gives you something to return to on Friday to reflect on how things went.

2.) The gratitude list.

The gratitude list is one of my favorites. It’s so important to take time to acknowledge the things we are grateful for. It can be a total mindset shift to start taking note of these, whether it’s getting to see a friend for lunch or finding a ripe mango at the grocery store.

Gratitude lists are an instant mood booster. Going through the process of writing these down can get you out of a funk when you feel like nothing is going your way. .

3.) The checklist.

A classic! Checklists are essential in so many professions. Everyone from pilots to surgeons makes checklists to make sure they have everything they need to do their job well. Lives depend on those checklists! I think that speaks volumes about how important this kind of list is.

Checklists are the right choice for tasks you need to do regularly. It can save time to create a checklist you return to rather than creating new to-do lists over and over again each time you need to do something.

4.) The timed to-do list.

To-do lists are probably the most common list out there. But I want to offer a twist that can boost the impact to-do lists have on your productivity: timing. Keeping track of how long things take you can allow you to create a to-do list that is organized by the length of time each task takes.

This is connected to your productivity style. If you know what time of day you have longer and shorter attention spans — and you know about how long each task on your to-do list takes — you can match up your tasks to your productive periods. Identifying your productivity style is something I go into in much more detail in my LinkedIn Learning course, The Power of Lists to Get Stuff Done. I also share about digital tools for list-making, managing stress around to-do lists, and much more.

You can watch the full course here.