Have you ever written items on your to-do list, gone back to it a few days later and have no idea what the items mean? It’s probably because your to-do list isn’t actionable. Let’s look at an example to-do list to get a better picture of this.
- Mom
- Kitchen
- Pride & Prejudice
- Cat
The to-do list above reads more like a shopping list than a set of actions. With a list like this, we have no idea what’s supposed to be done. A more actionable list should look something like this:
- Call mom
- Put up new shelves in the kitchen
- Purchase the book, Pride & Prejudice
- Take cat to the vet on Saturday
As you can see, we’ve taken our list of items and now made them actionable. So when we go back to it later, we know exactly what needs to be done. Are your to-do lists actionable? Want to know how you can tell if your to-do lists are actionable? Ask the follow question about each item on the list, “Does it begin with a verb?”