To Do Lists

As the end of my final semester at Quinnipiac approaches, the adage,  “so much to do, so little time”, has never been truer! I have to finish my web and print portfolios, write papers, and prepare presentations. I have gotten very little sleep over the past couple weeks and even pulled a couple all-nighters. I keep reminding myself that it will all be worth it. All of my hard work will be evident when I have portfolios I can be proud of. I have taken some advice from the book, Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind, on how to make it through these last weeks. In the book, Mark McGuinness recommends limiting your daily to-do lists. He suggests writing the list on a post-it note. He says, “if you can’t fit everything on a list that size, how will you do it all in one day?”(28) Granted, whether or not you can accomplish a post-it note worth of tasks in a day depends on the size of the task. Still, he makes a good point. At the beginning of last week, I made a list of everything I needed to accomplish that week. I, then, made note of what day those tasks needed to be done by, and chose the best days to do them. I proceeded to make seven smaller lists, one for each day of the week. Each day, I looked at to corresponding to-do list and accomplished everything on that list. For me, it was a less daunting way to approach the week. I found myself only focusing on the daily tasks. I was able to pace myself and still be productive. I can proudly say that I was able to accomplish all of my goals for last week and plan to do the same thing this week.