As the hard-working person you are, you like to manage your day with some daily scheduling to get the most out of it. What better way to organize yourself than prioritizing the work for the day and getting it all down on a daily planner to-do list. 

You sit down at your desk and with a pen and paper, or with your computer, and you start listing off a pile of tasks you need to accomplish. 

But not long after jotting down everything you can think of, you realize you’re staring at an overwhelmingly huge list of things you must do. The list of ‘priorities’ has now become an unmanageable amount of work. 

You start to feel stressed and worried when looking at your list of tasks. There’s no way you can finish all the items and you have no idea how your daily scheduling will work. 

There is a solution to this clutter of what was first a way to prioritize tasks.

The Benefits of Using More Than One List in Daily Scheduling

It starts to feel impossible to do all the things on your list. Some things on your daily planner to-do list take a few minutes, and others could take hours. Some could take days. 

As you go down your list, no matter how much you get done, it always feels like there is always more. 

Using one giant daily planner to-do list could be the source of the stress of finding time to complete everything. If you’re only working off of one giant master to-do list, this can easily be the case. 

The solution can be as simple as separating a list into different categories. This way, you can manage stress levels about the work that needs to be done. There are also benefits from a time frame perspective by dividing your master to-do lists across two or more lists.

The Master To-Do List 

You are the CEO of your life. And like any company, a master to-do list is like a working off of your company’s mission statement. 

Creating a master to-do list with big personal goals is the first step in mastering your time and efficiency. 

This list also serves as a visionary board. All the things you’d like to accomplish in the next one, two, or even five to ten years can go in this list. Remember, we can overestimate what we can do in a day, but underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. 

Creating a master to-do list gives you the overarching vision of how you’re molding your life on a macro basis. Overall long-term goals such as money, family, career, and material goals can fall into this category. 

You will then have a master blueprint of what you want your life to be like. 

The Daily Planner To-Do List

A master to-do list includes major milestones for long-term success, and a daily scheduling to-do list, on the other hand, includes smaller tasks you need to accomplish each day. 

The daily scheduling planner enables you to see your short-term goals for the day at a glance. This list can be split up into smaller lists. The way you organize this daily planner to-do list is going to depend on a few factors. 

1. Importance/ Priority. Is this a critical task that needs to be done? 
2. The time frame required to complete a task. Will the task take a whole day or a few hours? 
3. Can this task be split up into multiple tasks?

Having a productive day can start with an organized view of the tasks you need to complete. 

When you organize your daily scheduling to-do list based on priority, time, and manageable milestones, you will find that you’re completing things faster and have more time at the end of the day to spare.

Break Tasks Down into Smaller Chunks

Organize yourself and improve your productivity by creating milestones. Star the tasks that are the most important and rank the tasks on a priority basis. 

By breaking up your chunks into smaller tasks, you can use a method such as the Pomodoro technique. 

The Pomodoro technique is a time management strategy to work in short spurts of 25-minute intervals. After 25 minutes, you can stop to take a break. The goal is to work for the entirety of the 25 minutes.

Realistically, humans get bored after doing the same thing repeatedly. It can be a relief to switch up your work from time to time. This is the benefit of breaking up daily scheduling into small tasks. 

You can check off the tasks as you go along. Set yourself up for success by planning your day ahead of time.

How to Decide What to Separate

Everyone is different and has their own method of managing themselves. By using these methods of separating your tasks, you will ultimately save you more time in the year by giving yourself a clear understanding of long-term and short-term goals.

Here’s where long-term goals and short-term goals fit in your lists.

Master To-Do List: 

• All the goals and projects that are important to you on a long-term basis. 
• Can be arbitrary or specific. 
• These are big overarching goals. 

Daily Planner To-Do List: 

• All the goals that are meant to be accomplished daily. 
• These can be as short as a minute to a few hours to complete. 
• Try breaking this daily scheduling list up into smaller targets.

Weekly Planners & Monthly Planners

Additionally, you can also break down tasks into weekly and monthly subcategories. It can be ideal to make lists of what you want to accomplish in one week and one month. 

For each month, you might want to write down what your goals are for the start of the month. 

For example, say you want to lose weight. Write down the goal of losing 5 pounds. Track your progress as the weeks go by.

For one week, try to come up with realistic goals. If you’re trying to complete a big project, think about what you can contribute towards that project in one week. 

Once you write down the project you’d like to complete in one week, it becomes easier to work on sections of your project each day. 

This type of planning differs from the master to-do list. Your weekly or monthly plans might be a subset of your master to-do list.

Daily Scheduling is All About Efficiency

We all want to improve and get better over time. After all, time is a finite resource and there is only so much of it in a day. Getting all the things we want done in one day can be a difficult thing to manage. And even in a lifetime, there will always be things left unfinished. 

It might not be possible to see the entire picture when we’re bound to our daily activities, but it’s a good feeling to have when we know we’re on the right path. Life is not just about being organized and doing work, it’s as much about freeing your time for hobbies and loved ones.  

Mastering the power of a daily planner to-do list can leave you feeling less stressed and overwhelmed, and more in control and confident. 

Keeping multiple lists of things we want to accomplish gives us a sense of purpose and keeps our goals in front of our eyes. When you have a map of what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s a subconscious instinct to follow that map. 

Organizing your daily scheduling to-do list is just one part of the blueprint which will help you see the bigger picture. It’s also a reminder of working towards the small goals needed to accomplish big things. 

You also need to step back and appreciate how far you’ve come and celebrate the milestones.

Track Goals in Your Daily Schedule & the Big Goals will Take Care of Themselves

You might have heard the saying, “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” This is exactly what separating your daily goals and long-term goals will attain. 

When you separate your daily planner to-do list and master to-do lists, you will find that you are more efficient in meeting your goals and deadlines because you can focus on what you need to finish at hand without worrying about future goals. 

Over time, you will realize you are working towards the big long-term goals simply by making progress on the little ones. 

Not only will separating your daily scheduling and big-picture goals make things clearer, but it will also give you a sense of accomplishment. When you look up one day, you’ll see that you’ve made progress on everything you’ve set out to do. 

When you’re out crushing goals and achieving deadlines, make sure to continuously update your current goals and daily scheduling lists. By re-visiting your daily planner to-do list and re-organizing and adding to it, you raise the cap on your potential and continuously excel.

Becoming a master of your time is one of the greatest achievements to have. More time in your day means more time for the things you love. And the sense of achievement is the cherry on top.