The Wants & The Needs
Your Business Task List
Instead of making a “Things I Want Done” list, start with a list of “All The Things I’m Currently Doing.” That is, all the tasks involved in your business. Every. Single. One.
Spend one week making a list a freeform list. Just write down all the stuff you do.
Productivity tip: make this a digital document, using a software program like Word, or an online program like Google Docs or Evernote. This makes it shareable, easy to update, and hard to lose among the paper on your desk. If you’d prefer to put pen to paper, you can print out our template in the Worksheets section.
Every single task. It might look like this:
At the end of the week, you’ll probably have a long, long list.
Congratulations! Task done.
Sort Your List
This is next week. Or this week because the task list was last week. You’re with us right?
There is a reason why we did this as a second step. You might think you’re being all efficient and smart if you sort it while you are recording it. As efficiency nerds, we’re with you on that.
However, we’ve done this enough times to know a solid truth: writing and sorting the task list at the same time does not work. We know that business owners want to move on to the next thing Right Meow. We are so with you. But trying to do both at once will stop you from completing the list.
Anyway, here we are into the second week. You have your Business Task List.
Important note: the creation of your Business Task List could go on forever, but that’s okay. We’ve got a starting point to work with, and we can add to it later. Our task this week is just to sort. Stay with us.
You’re going to divide a sheet of paper into four sections (or use the template in the Worksheets section:
1. Things I Hate and Am Bad At
2. Things I Don’t Like and Am Okay At
3. Things I’m Okay With and Am Pretty Good At
4. MY THING: The Things That I Slay, and Give Me Energy
And now… start dropping things into each section. Pull them from your task list. Be honest.
See that first section: Things I Hate and Am Bad At? That’s the first set of things you are going to outsource.
You will be soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy.
Once you get comfortable outsourcing Section 1, you can start getting rid of Section 2: Things I Don’t Like and Am Okay At.
Rarely do we ever get completely rid of Section 3: Things I’m Okay with and Am Pretty Good At. This is the stuff that we tend to outsource to junior associates and partners, rather than Slayers. One day, if we’re all lucky, we get to spend all of our time in Section 4.
The Dream: Doing “The Things I Slay, and Give Me Energy” all day long.