Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Top 5 tasks

Having trouble deciding what to focus on? Keep getting distracted by the not-so-important tasks on your list? kathryn.white shared a great tip on selecting your “top 5” tasks to help you stay on track:

After reading Michael Heppell’s book on How To Be Brilliant, one of his suggestions is to have 5 tasks you write each night that ought to be completed the next day (if you don’t complete them all, that’s ok, they just carry over to the next day). Sometimes, with multiple lists I find it hard to follow what is really important.

I have created a tag called: 5Top which I tag the 5 most important tasks with. I also make them Priority 1 so they stand out in any other list (I don’t tend to use Priority 1 for anything else), and have a Smart List called Top 5 which just shows tasks with that tag. Simple - but effective.

Each day, I can review the Top 5 and if some of them got completed the day before I can add new ones. If too many have crept in (having lost count!), I can re-prioritise. With so many lists and so many tasks sometimes I just need a snapshot of what is really important. Limiting it to 5 makes it less daunting and helps me to refocus.

Thanks for sharing this tip, kathryn.white! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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