Why The Key to Accomplishing Your Goals and Tasks is Breaking Them Down

By GROWTH LEARNER

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Many successful, high performers use to-do lists to take care of tasks and to achieve their goals.

One big list of your goals or tasks without any indication of organization won’t help you at all. You can start off by listing everything you need to accomplish, but if it’s not organized in any manner, you won’t know where to begin.

Create a Master List

The big list, however, is a good place to begin. Create a master list – this will be your good, old-fashioned brain dump. Combine all of your lists from wherever you’ve taken down your notes, from your phone, from your notebook, or from any stickies you have laying around.

Any task that is on your mind belongs on this list.

Divide & Conquer

Break down your master list. Divide your list and categorize your tasks.

There are various ways you can do this. You can categorize your lists by areas of life or by priority. A few examples are:

Family
Home
Work
Health & Fitness

If you don’t categorize your lists by priority, do so once you’ve placed each goal or task in the appropriate list.

Now that you’ve got your “sub” lists, break those down to even smaller tasks:

“Job interview preparation” becomes

Research interview questions
Research company
Research location and commute
Print resume
Practice interview skills

“Clean” becomes

Sweep and mop the floors
Dust
Scrub bathroom
Catch up on laundry

Suddenly, your list is longer, but your tasks are much more manageable because you fully understand what needs to be done. These goals are broken up with milestones.

Taking your master task list from the length of a CVS receipt filled with stressful things you need to tackle and breaking them down into easily achievable goals will increase your productivity. You’ll start checking things off your to-do list in no time!