How do you keep track of your goals if you don’t keep lists? In fact, how do you even know what your goals are unless they’re in a list? It’s a rare person that has so few goals that they can remember all of them and the progress made toward achieving them. And as well as goal setting and tracking there are other great benefits to being a list maker.
1 Keeps You Organized
One of the best reasons to make lists is, quite simply, that it keeps you super organized! Whether you are a busy stay at home mom or the manager of a crowded office, it still helps to know exactly what all of your tasks are for the day. Writing everything you want to achieve down in a nice list and being able to check them off as you go inspires you to stay motivated and gives you a physical indictor of your progress.
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2 A Sense of Peace
Having everything that you need to get completed in a certain amount of time laid out in front of you can help to calm the activity storm in your brain and bring you a sense of order and peace that will help you to achieve the tasks one by one. As I said before, the physical act of being able to tick off each task as you complete it will fill you with such a sense of peace and achievement. It’s a cheap and easy way to give yourself a confidence boost.
3 Time Management
Writing down all of the things you need to do in a day will give you a much better idea of how long they will take together, and having this idea before you begin will allow you to have a much better sense of overall time management. This is important in two senses: the first being that you can make plans for the time after you think you’ll have finished; and secondly, your time management will allow you to pace yourself with each task so that you don’t rush it and can complete it to the best of your ability.
4 Excel at Work
Work can be a stressful environment for even the calmest of people, so having a list at the beginning of the day to show you exactly what you should be doing will take some pressure off of your memory and allow you to work almost in autopilot mode when the day is at its busiest. Having a list will ensure that you do not forget anything that you have to do.
5 Combat Forgetfulness
And just to expand on that point about forgetfulness, you literally don’t need to worry about that if you have a handy list pinned to your fridge at home or your desk at work. There is so much going on in daily life right now that it can be easy to let smaller tasks slip your mind, but if these smaller tasks start to pile up, they become much larger! Fight your forgetful nature by keeping a list to hand.
6 You Become More Reliable
You will find that using lists to get things done will turn you in to a much more reliable person. After getting used to the methodical process of writing down and completing all the tasks, you will translate this skill in to other areas of your life and become one of the most reliable friends to have. People know that you will always come through when you have promised something!
7 You Become More Efficient
As you write and complete more and more lists, you will find that you become much more efficient at doing the things you have set yourself out to do. Lists that once took you an entire afternoon to complete will soon only take you a couple of hours as you become faster and more proficient.
I am a list maker. I also write down thoughts in the same notebook.
