30 Jun How to create effective checklists
Creating Lists is one of the key features in mindburp.
Creating Lists and filling them with Burps 😇
In general, there are two main categories of checklists, periodic checklists and situational checklists.
Periodic checklists (daily/weekly/monthly, etc.) includes all the things you need to complete within a specific time span, for instance what’s on today’s agenda.
A situational checklist includes Burps specific to a certain event or project. For example, a checklist for building a new website or planning a party for your project team.
So, what makes a great checklist?
Here are some tips on how to make your lists more manageable.
Organise & prioritise
Maybe you have Burps that you can organise by frequency. For instance, if you have subscriptions or contracts that need’s to be renewed on a regular basis, you could add all these to a list and use the recurring due date feature.
If you have a daily checklist, it’s a good idea to rank your Burps by priority.
With mindburp PRO you can use the prio-stars function for this ⭐️
Burps marked with 3 stars may be high-priority and should perhaps be tackled before lunch. Burps marked with 2 stars are important but less urgent and Burps with 1 star you want to have on your radar, but it’s probably okay if you don’t get them done today.
The prio stars are for your eyes only, so even on shared lists you can keep your own priority on things!
Split large projects
Complex projects need great planning and control. This often means that you’ll need to break the project down into smaller steps.
If you are building a new business, don’t create a list with Burps like “Be profitable” or “Sell 1 million products” (it’s good to have a goal though!)
You want to create specific Burps that are easy (as easy as possible) to complete and keep you on the right path to that one million products-goal.
This often means breaking down large projects into small yet concrete activities. Maybe your first Burp could be “Write a business plan” and the next one “Choose a business name”.
Don’t worry if your list gets long, it’s much easier to complete a lot of smaller tasks than several major ones.
Keep your lists manageable
A checklist gives the big picture. The whats, not the hows.
Keep in mind, despite the importance of splitting large tasks into smaller ones, a balance is needed.
As mentioned above, it’s a good idea to split tasks into smaller portions, but too small and it will make it hard to see the overall objective.
A good rule of thumb; You should be able to read through lists and glance at each Burp and quickly understand what it is you need to do.
So for instance, if your list is ‘Make our website more attractive to customers’, and you want to increase traffic by 30%,
a Burp titled ‘Increase traffic’ is surely a what, it may be too broad to be efficient. At the same time, a Burp with the title ‘Add “sneakers” to the list of keywords in website dashboard keyword section” may be too specific.
Instead, split it up into smaller whats without the hows. Like ’Check external links’, ‘Do keyword research’ or ‘Send email newsletter’.
This way, your lists still only consists of effective whats, and still no micro-details about how to send a newsletter etc.
💡In mindburp, you can put a more detailed description in your Burps, where you can put all the info on the how-part of the things you need to do.
Regularly update your lists
Most lists are ever-evolving. No matter how thorough you are when creating your list, it’s highly likely that you missed to include something that needs to be there. So be sure to continue adding Burps as they come up.
Share the workload
Share lists with your colleagues, and friends. Help each-other out to the get things checked off. In mindburp, all lists members can check off Burps, edit Burps and even create new ones!
Click the “Show completed”-button once in a while.
It’s easy to get lost in how much you have left to do and forgetting about how much you have already accomplished! Seeing the list of completed Burps grow is pretty satisfying 🥳