A Power List: by Leif Nilsen
Welcome to our weekly guest blog! Each Sunday I will be featuring an article written by one of my closely respected colleagues. There is so much to learn, do and say when it comes to fitness & life I couldn’t possibly come close to covering it all. Now you’ll be able to learn a wide variety of information; and meet knew trainers to learn from as well. Enjoy!
We’ve all written them up and crossed them off. Jotted them down and left them undone. Made them with 10 items and 3 items.
I’ve been an advocate of to do lists for as long as I can remember, but it really took off on college. Whether it was for school work to be done, or chores to do at the house; I made a to do list nearly every day to make sure I didn’t miss a thing.
But, it became a small problem for me. I found a couple of issues when I started making my to-do list an important part of my day:
I would put things like “clean the dishes” and “trim your beard” down. While those are technically things “to do”, they are just a normal part of life that will get done regardless if I put them on my list or not.
Because I put all of these little things on my list I would end up stressing over how much ‘stuff’ I had to do. I would look at my seemingly unending list and get anxious about how much time it’s going to all take.
Doing the least important stuff first. As in, the dishes are going to be dirty in a half our anyway, so I don’t need to stress over doing them now vs a little bit later as there are other things to be done.
I learned how to remedy these problems by listening to a podcast in witch the episode included a main topic called ‘power lists’. A power list is a short list of 3,5,7 more important and productive items to get done that day; and leaving all other things off of it. What this does is create a tunnel vision into those specific tasks to get them done first and foremost, before nitpicking at all the smaller items to get done in your day. After I started making these daily power lists I would feel way less stressed looking at only a handful of important tasks to get done rather than a (sometimes literal) laundry list of things to get done on any given day.
I have also taken these power lists one step further on days where my time is more pressed than others. I would start allocating certain amounts of time to each of my tasks on that list. Now a days whether that is 30 minutes to write an article, or an hour to make a new program for a client, everything on my list is being limited by time, so that I have to sit down and focus on each given tasks so I do not fall behind in the schedule, and so that I do not lollygag through anything either. Think about how many times you’ve taken an hour to clean your room when a solid 20 minutes without dancing to music and looking at your phone would have sufficed.
Everyone loves the feeling of being productive and I believe do do lists are important to that, but power lists can step it up one more notch. These lists have been vital to my productivity recently; and they even give me more free time in the day that I never seemed to have with my never ending to do lists. Remember: keep them short, keep them time time bound, and it will open up so much more time on the back end to get all of that little ‘life’ stuff done. Hope this helps, and happy productivity!
Article by: Leif Nilsen
To contact Leif personally email leifnilsen17@gmail.com
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