What We’ve been Doing Wrong about Daily Task Lists

We come across a lot of articles and quotes about having a daily task list (probably some app or some productivity hack or something along these lines) to ensure that we are productive and contributing to our work and ourselves.

I’m sure they help a lot of people. But amongst its practitioners does it help everyone? I’m not sure…

Here’s why these daily task list may not be fully productive for everyone…

Doing list (the Daily To-Do List)

Usually people make daily to-do lists. These daily to-do lists are essentially smaller chunks of tasks to be done to create the whole. These are tasks that they need to do during the day. These are good only for the day (unless they are incomplete). They might add to bigger objectives. But my observations and experiences tell me different.

Essentially, they work where roles are clearly defined and limited in nature. Typically, these are ‘individual roles’ with no responsibility for other people or their work. In case of any team leading or managerial roles such to-do lists start having limitations since they are dependent and responsible for multiple people’s to-do lists.

Expand the role to a Leadership level or Business Head or CEO/MD/Ownership levels, the to-do lists start becoming ineffective. They can only be used for scheduling the day that too in a fairly stabilized work environment.

Why??

Because these roles are supposed to have a longer-term vision and perspectives and plans on their minds.

People in such senior roles might be able to just define the things they are supposed to finish during the day, the mails to be sent, meetings to be scheduled, visible issues to be resolved and so on. But not larger aspects of the business or operations.

What’s missing for these roles?

The daily to-do lists are important but I firmly believe, the other lists mentioned below are equally if not more important in any business operation. How many of us consciously plan any of these activities in our life?

Lets look at another aspect… most of us are slaves to the screens that we generally use. Be it our mobiles, laptops, tablets or TVs with constant bombarding of data and content. This leaves us with little to no time to step back and reflect, no time to have a period of inactivity, no time to get bored… essentially no time to sit and absorb and assimilate our environment and mull it over by ourselves.

Here are the other lists that we should be creating.

Thinking list

This is the most important thing that any of us are supposed to-do. THINK. Some might say that we are always thinking. True… But how many of us do it consciously and keep time away for it? Most of our thinking gets done sub-consciously. We have to allocate time to think and ruminate and question and critique ourselves and things that happen around us.

These thinking lists shall give a lot of business owners a lot of solutions and ways to execute them.

Planning list

These lists are about things that need to be planned AND the critical elements of the activities therein that need to be planned. “Well begun (and planned) is half done” is an adage that one might benefit from. I tell my clients that “A plan without a timeline is a wish-list”.

Spending as much time forecasting potential issues/impediments will help plan better and result in better outcomes too.

Analyzing list

The Analyzing list needs to be given at least an hour each day. I’ve seen a lot of business owners cursorily looking at MIS reports and moving onto the next issue to be solved. They like action and are keen to get into the heat of things.

Diving deep into the data and identifying root causes takes time and not allotting sufficient time is a business sin.

Strategizing list

The Strategizing List will contain items which are most misunderstood and misused. List of ‘strategy items’ is not only the big-ticket items but also those which are small ones, which are multipliers, show stoppers, long term and short term etc.

Being able to give time and think through these items takes a lot of time. Not doing it is just wandering in the market.

“Staring at the wall” list

“Staring at the wall” is a term I coined around 15yrs back and coached my clients on. This list is about being blank and emptying your minds, and stirring and agitating whatever thoughts come to your mind. This is a free-thinking time on anything and everything about your business or even your personal or social life since they are all interlinked. Some of this time can be random while some can be with specific objectives.

A good two hours a couple of times a week is very productive and gives clarity on where we are and what we need to be doing.

Implications for Small Businesses

How does all of this affect a small business owner? This is the crux of the matter.

Let me explain…

It is important to understand that planning in business operations doesn’t happen for smaller time durations of one day or one week etc.

One needs to widen the time frame to at least a month, a quarter, a half year, a year and so on. This elongated time periods will provide you an opportunity to plug in any unforeseen events, new developments, issues, organisational changes, customer or market changes into your plan.

For instance, a daily production plan is okay to manage and monitor the production output and dispatches and stock levels etc for the day. But for increasing productivity or output or efficiency we need to widen the time frame to at least a month if not a quarter. its foolhardy to roll out any new idea/initiative and expect results in a week.

A week is required for a typical team to even understand and assimilate what we are talking about. They would need 2–4 weeks to start modifying their routines and add the requisite activities coming through the new initiative. Post this stage they would internalize these activities as part of their routines and start performing the required tasks without supervision.

Similarly, for increasing sales and revenues a business owner needs to widen the time frame to at least a month or quarter (unless you are operating in an extremely commoditized sector). A sales budget will typically be for a year. A good Sales Plan would be created for a month and quarter to provide for the sales team to get time to generate leads, nurture them, build the relationships, develop confidence in the prospect/suspect about the company and products, and finally receiving the first trial order.

I’ve not come across many business owners who think through these elements in their businesses. Those that do have fairly better operations and teams than others.

With editorial support from my son, Ahan Ingole.

#smallbusiness