Happy Monday everybody!

I work off of “To Do” lists and I prioritize all my projects ABCD… using the system from Swallow that Frog. My to do list keeps getting invaded with other projects and requests.

How do I maintain my lists so that they are effective? Everyone and everything wants to be in my A file and I can’t find my balance. Do you have any suggestions?

Marcie Rowan

Hi Marcie

Yes, I have some suggestions.

1. Get really clear on your main purpose/ focus for your life at this point
This purpose may change from time to time, or it may not, but it’s still a good idea to check in with yourself regularly to make sure you still know what that purpose is.

E.g. this year my main purpose has been to have a healthy pregnancy and birth two live babies.

2. Use only one to-do list
When you use multiple lists, it’s very easy to forget about some things on “the other list”. I understand about different categories of things so what I do is I have one list with sub-headings like Personal, Business and Household. I can still see it all but it is ordered on paper and therefore in my mind.

3. Only put things on your to-do list that support your purpose
If your purpose is to create a loving, clean, organised home for your family, then you can’t be serving on every committee in sight and never spend time taking care of your home.

4. Once things are on your list, eat your frog or, as you call it, swallow your frog
This is where your ABCD system comes in. Or what I use with my clients, the time-value matrix where you focus on urgent and important tasks only.

Do your difficult but most important tasks first. If you hate doing the laundry (like me!), just do it to get it out of the way.

I can’t tell you what should be an A priority because we’re all different. But I can tell you that tasks which don’t support any of your goals are definitely not A priorities.

5. Don’t overload your lists
Pick a maximum of 6 tasks a day. When you sign up for the Organising Success Pack, you get a pack of organising forms. My Eat the Frog form only has space for 6 daily items for two very good reasons.

And that’s because

1. Most people can’t get more than 6 important tasks done daily (including me!)
2. I want you to feel good at the end of every day so rather putfewer tasks and actually get them done

Marcie, hope this helped!

Anybody have any more tips for Marcie? How do you manage your priorities on your own to-do lists?

Whoever thought you just fall pregnant, have a lovely glow and a bump to show off and 9 months later you have babies is sadly mistaken.

that would be me, by the way

Having babies involves serious project management and LOADS of decisions.

• which pram?
• which car seats?
• do we want one cot or two?
• who will deliver them?
• at which hospital?
• what about classes to show us what to do?
• what do we buy?
• can you be a minimalist
• how do you sort out the babies’ room?
• etc
• etc

The list seriously goes on and on and I’ve been threatening to do a master to-do list although it felt a bit…I don’t know… cold when you think these are BABIES.

Nevertheless, I realised something had to be done because people would ask me things and I’d say “I don’t know” or “haven’t thought about it yet”, which gets old really quickly.

So I caved and used one of my master to-do lists in the Organising Success Pack

And do you know what? It’s not as bad as I thought.

There were only 16 items on there.

Which reinforces what I always tell my clients – write it down; it’s usually much worse in your head than on paper

Do you use master to-do lists? How do you keep tasks on big projects organised in your mind?

This ecourse will take you, step-by-step, from overwhelm to peace and order. There are short lessons and practical steps because I know you already don’t have time! You also get a quickstart 60-minute audio to jump-start your progress.

Check it out now

I’ve just finished writing my weekly tips email which goes out every Wednesday and something just occurred to me.

I send out a weekly tips email that relates in some way to helping you have more time, less stress and a more organised and fulfilled life. There are lots of organising tips and ideas that you guys don’t get to see

Now and again, I’ll put something on the blog that I’ve sent out in my weekly tips but that happens very rarely.

I often have discounts on my products but this is just for newsletter subscribers so I never publish those discounts here. Like at the moment I have a birthday discount for my subscribers on 3 of my products because I had a birthday this month. (Yes, I’m 33).

Anyway, so if you’re interested, go sign up on my website or fill in the box on the sidebar —->>. If after a week or two you don’t find any value in the emails, please unsubscribe. The last thing I want to do is clutter up your inbox with stuff you don’t want

You’ll get an email asking you to confirm your subscription because I have a double opt-in list to prevent spammers. By the way, my webhost doesn’t like gmail accounts so try to use anything else

And then you’ll get the Organising Success Pack with your free e-book, Organise your Life.

More importantly, tomorrow when I send out the mailing with the discounts and this week’s article (7 secrets to the Super Organised), you’ll also get it.

And now, I’m off to bed. My cut-off for computer work is 10pm and we’re just about there