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Paula Rizzo makes her to-do list the night before, not in the morning. She writes down everything for the next day, circles time-specific items, and uses it like a TV news rundown to stay focused when distractions hit.
Paula Rizzo makes her to-do list the night before, not in the morning. She writes down everything for the next day, circles time-specific items, and uses it like a TV news rundown to stay focused when distractions hit.
Hey there, Paula Rizzo from ListProducer.com here, and I just wanted to share a couple of how-tos. I told you I wanted to do some more video this year, and so this video is how to set up a to-do list. So every night before I leave my desk at work, I sit down and I think about all the things that I need to do the following day. And the reason I do that is because you know how it works. You come in in the morning, you sit down, you have the best of intentions, and you think, "Okay, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna get my stuff done. Let me just see what should I do. Let me start making a list." And then somebody comes into your office, and then your phone rings, and then an email pings, and then all of this other stuff starts happening, and you actually never really even get to the to-do list. You don't even get to write one because you're just putting out fires, like one after the next after the next after the next. So what I do works so much better, I think. Doing it the night before, right before I leave, even if I feel like I'm gonna be late for something or like, "Oh, it's the one last thing I need to do." No. You sit down and you do that to-do list before you leave. You will thank yourself in the morning. And you run through every last little thing that you need to do. So that includes emails you need to write the next day, phone calls, appointments, lunches, whatever. Just write it all down. And I usually like to think of it as like before lunch, after lunch. And I also, you know, I circle if there's like an actual time, like I have a phone call at 11 AM, I circle 11 so that when I come in the next morning, I can see it very clearly that I have a call at 11 AM. I am. And doing that for me has been so helpful because then I come in in the morning, I sit down at my desk, I take out my list, and I say, okay, what am I doing today? What's, what's the thing that I have to get back to? And if I do get distracted, the nice thing is I have the list and I go right back to the list and I'm able to see what's next, what's next, what's next. And that comes from my background as a TV producer. In television, live news, we use a rundown, and the rundown is basically telling you what's next. It's a complete list— imagine that— a list of all the things, all the stories that are coming and what order they're in. And so I look at my to-do list almost as the same thing. It's my rundown, it's my roadmap for the day, so I can go back, check it out, see what's on there, cross some stuff off, and move on. And I find it to help me be a little less stressed during the day. So I invite you to try to write your to-do list the night before you leave your desk. Let me know what you think when you try it. Send me an email at paula@listproducer.com. See you guys later.
