Are you a To-Do list fiend?  Do you want to travel the world?  Write a novel?  Compose an opera?  Learn a language? 

Then you might like this post 🙂  The concept of the Six Box To-Do List, is to make a list of all those projects you want to do.

Make a Jumbo List

First, make a list of all the things you want to do.  Next, accept that if these projects are big, you might not be able to do them all so if you had the chance to only manage FIVE of them – which five would you pick?

Decisions, decisions

Now you have to make the painstaking decision of which five you want to work towards, grab some paper and divide it into 6 boxes.

And at the top of each box write one of your five Life Goals.  In the sixth Box, write Misc.

(I personally realised that a single sheet of paper wasn’t big enough, so I used a notepad and labelled each page so I had a whole page (front and back) specifically to each Life Goal.)

Organise & Categorise

Now, take your current to-do list.  Let’s be honest, I know you have one!  And transfer the relevant To-Do items onto the specific Box/page.

For example:

Box/Page 1 – WRITE NOVEL

• Create character profiles
• Complete outline
• Research Self-Publishing options

So anything you might be working on that is specific to one of your Life Goals, gets added to the right place.  (Doesn’t have to be in order!)

Box/Page 2 – TRAVEL

• Create a saving tracker (£X amount to save by X date)
• Renew passport
• Check requirements for destinations (eg vaccinations needed)
• Organise travel insurance

Now every time you have something on your normal To-Do list, you add it to the relevant category instead.

If it doesn’t fit into your main five it goes on the sixth box/page.  This will give you an idea of where you are spending your time.

Analyse and adjust accordingly

The concept is that your sixth box/page should NOT monopolise your time.  If you are doing more tasks from the sixth box/page than the other five, you are not working towards your life goals.

So make sure, each week that you do something from the main five.  Help yourself move forward with what you really want to do.

It also stops you losing some of the more important To-Dos amidst all the other crap.

You may even start to realise that the stuff in box six…. isn’t all that important and can even be removed completely.

We have a finite amount of time on this planet.  So let’s work towards what we truly want and stop waiting for “someday.”