Whether you are a mom (happy homemaker) or a mogul (internet marketer) – we all have a list of tasks to complete. How you complete them depends on the type of person you are.  I like to procrastinate,  so my style is completing EVERYTHING at the last minute. Unless you like living under the gun, I suggest you don’t do it that way.

First thing is to remember your tasks don’t always have to be completed in the order they are on your list (think shopping list). Normally you will have simple tasks and difficult taskss. If you are the type of person who needs motivation to complete a project, do the simple tasks first so you don’t get discouraged, frustrated or feel “this is taking so long”.  For example, when doing my chores  I clean the bathroom first because it’s the easiest and when its complete, I have 20% of my cleaning done. The living  room is next (it’s pretty easy too because usually most of the stuff there  belongs in other rooms) and when that is finished I have 50% of cleaning done. Next is the kitchen – I hate cleaning the kitchen, but i think to myself  ”I’m half way there!”  so that gives me  a little motivation, plus I look over at the living room and see that it’s clean, so that helps too.   When the kitchen is finished, I’m 75% done. At this point only the bedroom is left. I hate cleaning my bedroom – I don’t have enough closet space, too many shoes,  and in my determination to become a “minimalist”, I do not have many shelves, drawers or any other type of organization.  Now, if I were to start my cleaning chores with the bedroom, I’d just sit and stare for  hours with 100% looming over my head.

Others might like the challenge of tackling the big things first to “get them out the way”.  I attempt to use this approach as well.  Sometimes a task is so big that just finishing it makes it feel like you’ve made it over a hump, everything else is smooth sailing.  For example, when I’m creating an ecourse the biggest time taker is the “planning phase”  – what am I going to say, how am I going to say it, how will the learner navigate through my ecourse. Planning will take 50-60% of my time.  But once that’s done, the small things of putting it all together, making graphics, making animations, writing the pages is all very easy. That sounds great, doesn’t it?  Well,  it doesn’t work like that for me most of the time. To me, planning takes too long, so I find myself moving back and forth between planning / storyboarding, building the course, making graphics, planning a little more. I even go back to completing the easy tasks first.

I always start an ecourse saying “I’m going to plan this out completely first! Really, this time I’m going to do it!”  Nah. Unfortunately my need for variety just won’t let me.  But in the end, who really cares about your method if all of your tasks are completed at the quality they should be and your final result is obtained?

In any case, I wanted to recommend a cool tool that I hope to demo soon. Its called RemembertheMilk.com This service allows you to list all of your tasks and mark them as complete.  I like using online services because I have access to my data at anytime.  I had originally used this along with my Gmail and Google Calendar, but I see they have more features now.  Check it out, especially if you used Gmail, its free!