Fighting procrastination: starting my daily tasks list

I'm reading a book, and a lot of articles about fighting procrastination. A lot of people that are successful in beating procrastination are talking about the importance of daily tasks lists.

Tasks lists, to-do lists, organizers,... there is a lot of possibilities how to record tasks you need to do later. But daily tasks list is about recording every task you either need or want to do every day!

There are tasks that you probably already do daily and so automatically that you don't need to record them in such list (e.g. brushing teeth, taking a bath/shower,...). But there are tasks that you don't do everyday even though you want to (e.g. workout, waking up earlier,...).

For tasks like this, there is a big probability of procrastinating them or even forgeting about some. And that's the reason to create your daily task list.

Daily task list should contain:

• a date (and optionally a name) for every day in the month (I preffer column)
• list of tasks (I prefer line)
• blank cell for every day/task (the place where the column meets the line)
• additional info for every task that needs specification (wake up earlier - 6am....)

It can of course contain more content, it's up to you what do you prefer.

Here is my very simple task list created in Excel. I work shifts so I also differentiated them with colors, because only then I can define what does "wake up early" means for which kind of day. If you're going to do this also, do it only for day, date and list of tasks. You'll need the rest blank for your records.

If there is a activity you want to do only someday (once a week), not everyday, but you want to have it on this list, fill corresponding cells gray for every other day.

Okay you have your own daily tasks list. Now how to use it:

Everytime you complete the task as you should/want, fill the corresponding cell with green marker.

Everytime you do not complete it but you could, fill the corresponding cell with red marker.

Everytime you couldn't complete the task (illness, wasn't home that day,..) fill the corresponding cell with some other colored marker (like blue...).

This way, your daily task list will not only show you your daily progress, but after few days, it will also show your week and month progress.

Having the list will motivate you more than only having a thought because thoughts can be simply forgotten or simply not in your head at the time you're able to do something from your task list.

But beware of procrastinating the daily task list completation!

If you'll procrastinate it, remeber what you did few days ago and fill it as soon as possible. It's very important for the list to work as it should.

Also, you shouldn't use the daily task list on PC. Print it or create it by hand on a paper. So you can attach it on some place you view every day. It will keep you reminding you your tasks.

I hope this way of setting an order for your everyday tasks will help you as it is helping me. It helped me to procrastinate less. I now really force myself to read more, to do at least some exercises to stay fit (more likely to regain my fitness). Every red-filled cell of my daily task list is making me feel bad and making me want to be better next day.

So good luck my friends!