It’s Monday. The first thing you should do is tackle your todo list

Because as this piece argues: Your To-Do List Is, in Fact, Too Long.

I know mine is. Yours likely is too. And if you are using your inbox as an organic todo list, I am sure it is too long.

That piece argues for one way of dealing with it. To me, I think there are several ways. Here are some:

1. Write down 1-3 things on your list that you can definitely accomplish today. Meetings count. So does research and education. Lunch too.
2. Write down 1 hard thing and 1 fun thing to do from your list. Do that hard thing, then reward yourself with the fun thing.
3. Park your old todo list somewhere. Come up with a new list. On the bottom of it, write down: revisit my old list later in the day. You will discover two things: one, you did things on it even if you couldn’t bear to write them down now; two, the things you actually did were more important than the things on your list.
4. First thing on your todo list: create two new lists. One list is all the things on your todolist you can avoid doing for a month; the other list are things you have to do this month. Second thing on your todo list: for the second todo list, write down the least amount of things you have to do to push all the items off until the next month. After you do this, your list will shrink considerably.
5. Don’t write anything down first, just start working. Every time you get something done in a period of 15 minutes or more, write it down. That was your todo list all along: you just couldn’t write it until you started.

Image via Donald Giannatti