To-do List in Dynamic Time Management

• "Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile." (Stephen Covey), which means that long-term to-do list is rather useless.
• "Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems." (Stephen Covey) and we usually know our opportunities only for the nearest future.
• The priorities of our main activities are dynamic. They depends on the amount of time we spent for our main activities previously. Therefore, it is a good idea to compose our to-do list knowing this priority e.g. from Activities and Priorities and as Covey writes: "aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things."
• Your Voice Reminder can remind us in advance about deadline driven things so that there is no need to keep them in to-do list in advance. By the way, it prints todo list.
  
• As we discussed earlier, to manage time effectively it is highly desirable to consolidate the time into blocks of 45 to 90 minutes each. It means that our to-do list becomes shorter.

Most of time manager gurus advice to compose your to-day list yearly in the morning when you mind is fresh and it is unlikely that someone interrupts you. I also compose my to-do list in the morning looking at priorities of my main activities, which shows me by Activities and Priorities and adding deadline driven things to Your Voice Reminder that may automatically compose and print to-do list in convenient portable format described below. I made Activities and Priorities program for this purpose when being in permanent crisis and stressful situation recognized that it could help me to become opportunity mind person instead of crisis manager. However if you think that I prefer to have the to-do list in electronic form you are wrong.

It is true that computers and programs are both my work and hobby, but I never understood people, who rely solely on their electronic to-do lists. I prefer to have my to-do list always with me and modify it as needed, keeping in mind my main activities. However I cannot always to have my computer with me even if it is palm computer or organizer. They are too fragile to have them with me while I do, say jogging. But I found out that many good ideas came to me during this time and I need something to record them. Computer and organizer also attract too much attention, when, for example, I need my to-do list during a meeting to remind myself about the topics that I planned to discuss.

To be honest, I prefer a sheet of paper. Long ago, I found out from TV news that the presidents of many western countries also preferred the sheets of paper for their to-do list in summits. So I am in a good company and I invite you to join. I will describe how you can make convenient weekly to-do list of palm size from standard A4 or Letter size sheet of paper in a minute.

You may also automatically compose and print such a to-do list from your alarms and startup reminders with Your Voice Reminder software. It leaves the space between the notes to give you the opportunity to add the hand written items.

After the using, you can put these lists into a folder and keep it there forever so that you could always find, say, the name and phone of the person that you talked in the plane several years ago. Papers are much more reliable than electronic devices when you store your information for long time.

I read about this "sheet of paper organizer" many years ago in a magazine. Unfortunately I did not remember neither the name of its author nor the magazine, but I remember that the author does not mind if someone distributes his idea for free.

So let us begin. Take A4 sheet of paper. A4 is the most common size that people use in offices. If you have no A4 paper, take any rectangular sheet of paper about two your palms in height ant 1.5 palm in width. Exact size does not matter much. Bend it like in image below. If you use Your Voice Reminder, than first print to-do list and then bend it along dashed lines

In folded state the size of the to-do list is slightly less than the palm and it fit in almost any pocket or bag.

Let us proceed. Unfold the paper and write days and their names at both sides of the paper similar to example below (the bending lines are marked by dashed lines)

In the top of the list you usually writes your morning tasks, in the middle of the list usually are your afternoon tasks and at the bottom are your evening tasks. The morning, afternoon and evening are separated by bending lines. At the end of the list (Sa-Su i.e. weekend evening) I usually write tasks for the next week.

It is convenient to fold this to-do list so that the present time is at the front. For example, for Tuesday afternoon it is convenient to fold the list as in example below.

Your palm size, paper thin, extremely reliable, stable and imperceptible to-do list is ready.

Quotations

"Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems." (Stephen Covey)

"Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things".(Stephen Covey)

"Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile (Stephen Covey)".

"As the number of items on your to-do list grows, your ability to accomplish your goals diminishes. (Having a long to-do list will also, ironically, make the task of time management itself take longer.) Your goal should be to come up with a daily list of fewer than ten—or, better yet, five—important tasks". (Hillary Rettig)

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler". (Albert Einstein)

"I recommend writing out your to-do list in the morning". (Hillary Rettig)