Struggling with a sprawling to-do list is no fun. The folks at WorkAwesome suggest tweaking your to-do list into a "1-3-5 list," or one big thing you need to do, three medium-priority things you'd like to do, and five smaller "nice to haves." Write it all down, and you have a simple, prioritized list to tackle.
We've discussed how to take your to-do list back to basics, and why priority is something you should bake into it, but when you're stuck with a list of dozens of to-dos, it's difficult to just scrap them all and start over. Instead, take the one most important thing you should do each day and make it the "1" part of the list. Then the others are up to you. It should only take a few moments, and you now havea new list you can tackle right away. When you're done, you'll have accomplished a lot.
We could see this as part of your morning ritual—when you get to work, you look at your actual to-do list, pick your one, three, and five, then shelve the master list until the short one is done. You should be flexible for what comes up during the day of course, but this is an easy way to quickly prioritize and get to work—which is the point, after all.
Whoops! Looks like we've mentioned this tip before. Sorry for the dupe, everyone!
The To-Do List: You’re Doing It Wrong. Here are 5 Alternatives | WorkAwesome