Most peoples’ to-do lists are holding them back.
Here’s an example to-do list for a content marketer which follows the classic to-do list approach:
- Write newsletter draft
- Design newsletter featured image
- Write blog post #38
- Optimize blog post #37 for SEO
- Ask manager about draft approval
- Ask colleague about preferred header image for new lead magnet
- Turn stats mentioned in blog post #34 into social infographics
- Update meta-data for landing page
While it’s good to have your to-do’s clearly formulated like this, you may notice that these activities require different tools to be completed.
If we were to follow this list from top to bottom, we’d constantly be switching from tool A, B, C, and back again.
This is problematic because context-switching kills your focus and over time builds up to thousands of hours lost.
The solution?
Context-based to-do lists.
Here’s how the example mentioned above could look instead.
- [GOOGLE DOCS]
– Write newsletter draft
– Write blog post #38 - [CANVA]
– Design newsletter featured image
– Turn stats mentioned in blog post #34 into social infographics - [WORDPRESS]
– Optimize blog post #37 for SEO
– Update meta-data for landing page - [SLACK]
– Ask manager about draft approval
– Ask colleague about preferred header image for new lead magnet
Same to do’s, better focus, higher quality output, and more time saved as a result.
Actionable advice for this week: break your to-do list up by Context.
Think about your contexts, segment your to-do’s, and stick to each segment until you move on to the next.