A better alternative to your to-do list
✅ Today’s tip: Replace your to-do list with a personal task board.
Satisfying as it may be to cross a task off your to-do list (extremely satisfying), it’s also a bit of a myopic system: “Day after day, you’re simply pushing around individual actions without seeing the ‘why’ behind them,” writes Herman Meeuwsen.
His alternative: the personal task board, a riff on a system that Meeuwsen, a scrum master, uses with his team. “We plan tasks in detail for the short term to support high-level goals. The framework allows us to quickly adapt our plan of action when circumstances change,” he writes. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this for our personal goals, too?”
To make your own task board, get some sticky notes and a whiteboard (or a really big sheet of paper), or create a digital chart. Make six columns. The first is where you list your goals. On the top of the second column, write “To Do” — this is where you’ll park your sticky notes, each one containing a specific action item that brings you closer to a goal. Columns three through six are “This Month,” “This Week,” “Today,” and “Done.” Now move your sticky notes around as needed, and enjoy the big-picture view of your progress.
📚 More from Forge on thinking long-term:
Why You Should Write Notes to Your Future Self
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The Crucial Difference Between Intentions and Goals
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A Universal Formula for Doing Big Things
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