How far is your To-Do list?

We’re all used to comparing how long our to-do lists are, but a better comparison might be how far your list stretches. Yes, I am asking how far into the future your to-do list goes.

It's good to stay busy; it's good to be valuable, of course. But take a more in depth look (instead of a long, hard one) at your to-do list and ask yourself if you see any item that is going to take you more than 90 days, 6 months or even a year to complete.

I talked about the consequence of only reacting to the short-term in my recent blog post.  Your to-do list is a great gauge to see if you are not focused on the long-term, thereby facing some of those consequences.

Maybe these longer-term to-do’s are visionary items: "instill change," "bolster team morale," or "be the ideal department within the company." These items may be hard to measure too, but that does not mean they should not live on your to-do list.

If you have any terms like "strategic, planning, development, etc" in your title or job description and you or your team's to-do list does not have items beyond 90 days, you might want to reconsider changing your title and/or job description, or else adding some of those long-term to-do’s.

Once you get some forward-thinking tasks on your list, make sure the other items support and lead to success of the long-term tasks. Go through your list and ask yourself how each short-term task helps you reach the long term.

Brad's To-Do:

• Write today's blog post (done)
• Publish blog post (done)
• Write new blog post (1-2 days) 
• Become a known and respected voice within the marketing community (90+ days)

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