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You may remember the fairy story about the Magic Porridge Pot. In the story, the porridge pot keeps making porridge until it overflows out of the pot, fills the house, slides down the garden path and continues to cover the whole village, until someone shouts the magic words,

“Stop, pot, STOP!”

How often do you feel your To Do List is a little like that? We start with good intentions of writing everything down, but the To Do List typically becomes nothing more than a brain dump and before we know it, the list becomes a Magic Porridge Pot of its own – a never ending sticky stream of stuff, which never seems to slow down, never mind how much we shout at it to stop!

I prefer the term “Action List” as it psychologically invites you to take action, rather than weighs heavily on your shoulders as “more stuff to do”. Here’s how to create a really efficient Action List that actually works!

First, (if you haven’t already), get a Family Planner/Calendar and a personal Daily Diary. This is the perfect time of year to be buying a new one for next year. Your own Daily Diary can be paper based or an iPhone/Blackberry – so long as it’s got plenty of room to write on each day’s page.

Write down all the things you want to do, need to do and have to do. Put all of them on one s heet of paper. (This will probably end up looking like your traditional To Do list). This is your Master List.

Take each task on the list and ask yourself the following question: “Is this something I can do today?”

If the answer is YES, write it in today’s Daily Diary page.

If the answer is NO, then ask yourself, “When would it make sense to do it?” And then write the task on the corresponding day in your Daily Diary.

Once you’ve distributed your to-do’s around your diary, you can close it and cross the tasks off your master list. And forget about them! You only need to think about them on the day they need doing.

As an addition to my personal daily planner, I also write the tasks down on the Family Daily Planner on the kitchen wall. Then everyone needs to see what needs to be achieved that day and – crucially – whose responsibility it is to action each item. It’s a great way of getting the family to work together as a team and a great excuse for finding treats and rewards for you all when you all pull together and finish all the tasks each day!

Now, instead of being overwhelmed by a huge list, you can bring specific tasks into your near focus only on the day you’ve chosen to do them. You can now safely throw away the master list and any other scraps of paper you had things scribbled on.

So what are you waiting for? Take action!

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