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4 Must Use To Do Lists for Remote Workers

Don’t you just love the feeling of checking an item off of your to do list? This is honestly one of my favorite things. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent years making to do lists. However, today I want to talk about 3 different lists that we all need to add a little extra structure and organization to our work and personal lives? Sound interesting? Keep reading. I’ve adopted this concept from David Allen who is the King of the productivity field and author of the popular book, Getting Things Done. I don’t follow all of his methods, but I do love his advice about creating different lists.

Why is this important when you work remotely or from home?

If you currently work remotely or would like to in the future, let me give you a heads up…remote work requires a whole new level of organization from what you might be accustomed to.

As remote workers, we often juggle multiple projects and responsibilities. When you’re in an office, you often don’t have the same levels of distractions or things vying for your attention as you do working remotely or from a home office.

Because of this, it’s essential to find solid organizational systems and structures that work in your day to day remote life.

For those who have never tried it, remote work can appear relaxed and blissful…but it often isn’t. It’s easy to take an afternoon off here and there, and before you know it the work is stacked up and you’re in over your head.

I know that I’ve felt this way more than once, and I’m telling you, from one remote worker to another, these lists have made a huge difference! So, let’s jump right in…

The 4 Lists that I use are…

The Master List
The Monthly List
The Weekly List
The Daily List

Let’s start with the Master List so that we can work from big picture to more specific.

Master List:

This is probably what most of us think of when we create a to do list. It’s a long list of everything that needs to get done. It’s essentially a dumping ground and later on we will move items from this list to other ones.
If you’ve spent most of your life just using a master list you’re probably wondering…why do I even need other lists? That’s a great question. I used to only use a master list but I often found this overwhelming. When you have a list of 50 items, it’s hard to know where to start or how to prioritize.
Because of this, I loving adding in the other two lists, daily and monthly.

So, let’s move on to the next one….

Monthly List:

A monthly list is everything from the Master List that you hope to work on or complete for that particular month. If it’s not something that needs to be done in the current month, I leave it on the Master List until I need to move it to the monthly list.

This is really helpful in terms of prioritizing. For example, I might have these 5 items on my Master List:
Write content for remote work course
Record audio for remote work course
Schedule remote work interviews for blog
Create Sales Page for course
Market course

While these are all important items, I won’t be completing all of these in the current month. This means that for now, all I need to really worry about is writing the content for the course, and the other 4 items will happen in subsequent months.

However, just having all of these things on my to do list can feel a little overwhelming. Therefore, I would keep all of these on the Master List but would only include the first item, ‘Write content for remote work course’ on the Monthly list.

Now, we’ll move on to the next one…

Weekly List:

Once you have your monthly list in place, start thinking about your weekly list. I like to take 5-10 minutes to do this on Sunday where I plan out the week and schedule my items on the Weekly list.

I always start by adding the items that have strict deadlines. After that, I try to consider what would be a manageable number of tasks for the week. I’ve found that I prefer to include a smaller number of items. Then, if I successfully complete each item, then I choose 1-2 additional items to move to the weekly list.
I find that it’s better for my own personal motivation to set the bar a little low, achieve everything, and then anything beyond that just feels like a bonus!
Once I have my items for the weekly list, I also try to assign a day for each item. I try to distribute an even amount of work each day.
For example, if it’s Monday and I’m able to finish all of the Monday’s tasks and I still have some time to work, I will get to work on my Tuesday items. This is a great feeling as it makes me feel as though I’m ahead of schedule.

Finally, the last one is…

Daily List:

I try to stick to 3 items for this one. Now, if your work or tasks are smaller then you might be able to double or triple this, it’s up to you.
Just like the other ones, my advice here is to keep it manageable. Don’t put 12 things on your daily list if you know that you only have time for 3-4. This just sets you up for failure.
At first, it might seem like you’re spending too much time transferring items from list to list, but once you get the hang of it, it’s truly a seamless process.

There’s even a Brian Tracy quote that says that “every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes later on in execution.”

I find that this is so true! When you create a clear plan, and know exactly what you should be working on, you spend less time procrastinating, thinking, and wondering what to do.

To Sum Up You Need These 4 Lists:

1. Master List

2. Monthly List

3. Weekly List

4. Daily List

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To Do Lists for Remote Workers

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