It is very important to understand this process, because it actually happens every time we want to make a change – be it our thinking, behavior or habits. Once you understand how this works, and apply the one proven technique I am going to teach you in this post, you will be able to make sustainable and meaningful changes in your life.

What do I mean exactly by looking at our neocortex using the FIFO concept? Well, it means that if you put thought A into your brain, and then put in thoughts B, C, D and E, the original thought A will be pushed down in the queue by the new thoughts. And once you put enough new thoughts in, the original desired thought A will get pushed completely out of your mind by the newly upcoming thoughts. Just small residue in your subconscious mind will be left.

One of the biggest challenges of life in the modern society is that new thoughts are forced into your mind all the time, whether you like it or not – advertising and distractions being just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The problem: You want to make a change, so you put the thought of change into your mind, and sooner than you think, it’s being pushed out by other stuff – while nothing has really changed.

Because in the FIFO analogy, all thoughts are eventually replaced by new thoughts, it is vital to keep putting the desired thought into your mind daily. That way, you will be able to maintain focus and attention, which is crucial for any meaningful change. And if you put in the desired thought enough times, e.g. on 30 to 60 consecutive days, its imprint in subconscious mind will become significant and self-sustaining for some time.

Time management expert, Mark Forster, says this the best in the introduction of his book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time To Play: “(…) regular focused attention is the key to virtually every problem and challenge, and the more we learn how to direct and focus our attention the more skilled we will be at life. This is because anything that we give our attention to will start to change.”

And how do you actually do this? It is deceptively simple:

1. Create a sheet of paper that contains both your vision (how you want your life to look like), and goals (what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 12 months to get closer to your vision).
2. Read it every single day (and don’t skip or stop)

Sounds easy and not that new, right? But the devil is in the details.

First, this works great for goals and can be made even more effective with visualization. And second, there is one significant but not obvious benefit.

When it comes to goal achivement, applying this concept is especially powerful. In the book Master Your Workday Now, Michael Linenberger describes a concept of “spinning goals”. In his metaphor, each idea in our mind has a spin velocity, and just as with a gyroscope, when the velocity is high enough, it is very hard to divert its course. Daily reading of your goals or vision is thus referred to as “spinning” and increases the energy of desired thoughts and ideas in your mind. Michael argues that this is extremely important if we want remain on track to achieving our goals and fulfilling our vision. His is a similar concept of what I am describing here, just seen from a different angle.

But Michael adds one very significant addition to this: Visualization. It is well established, especially in the athletics field, that visualizing something before actually doing it increases the performance very significantly. He argues that it is very important to visualize your vision every time you read it.

The hidden benefits of daily focus

There is one huge benefit of this technique that is not obvious.

In the breakthrough book The Power of Full Engagement, the authors (Dr. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz) emphasize the importance of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy for any meaningful achievement (and sustainable productivity). While the physical energy can’t be harnessed using our minds and requires proper exercise and nutrition, the 3 other energy sources (mental, emotional, and spiritual) can be all renewed by regularly reading and visualizing your goals and vision.

It is not just my personal experience that if you have a well written vision statement, just reading it will make you feel great (emotional). It will also help you focus (mental), as it will make clear what you need to do. And it can even show you the high-level big picture of your contribution and purpose (spiritual).

How to write your vision and goals

The vision should state how your ideal life looks like, and your goals should eventually take you there.

Good vision is written as it was already true (for example, “I am very energetic and passionate about my work, because…” and not “I want to be energetic and passionate about my work, because…”), and arouses very positive emotions on you (“I am the king of the tennis court, the other guy shouldn’t even bother showing up” or “I am the ultimate business ninja”). As a rule of thumb, if reading your vision makes you crack up inside and brighten up, it’s written well.

I think it’s best to have a single sheet of paper with both your vision and list of goals, and to read it every morning, and ideally in the evening as well. Post it somewhere you can see it daily and make it a ritual of reviewing it every day. Create reminders. Heck, print and post it on multiple locations. It is crucial that you read and visualize it every single day.

By reading your vision and goals every day, you will keep pushing the positive thoughts to the front of the thought FIFO queue in your mind. This will not just help you to stay on track, focus, and embed the thought into your sub-consciousness permanently, but ultimately provide you with the much needed energy to make this change happen.

This makes change not just possible, but much easier and enjoyable.

Your action steps:

1. Write a vision statement for your life. Use active voice and emotional expressions. Reading and visualizing it should feel great.
2. Write and append a list of goals that will move you closer to your vision.
3. Post it somewhere you can see it.
4. Make absolutely sure that you will read and visualize it every day. Decide exactly when and how you are going to read it. Decide how you will remind yourself to read it.
5. Read (and visualize it) every day.
6. As your vision evolves and goals get accomplished, update your vision statement.

PS: I maintain my vision statement and list of goals in a memo in my own Swift To-Do List 7 for Windows, which I’ve been developing for the last 7 years. If you could use a task and notes organizer, then definitely download the fully functional 30-day trial. You will love it.

- By Jiri Novotny+, the obsessed author of the number one to-do list software for Windows, Swift To-Do List. Jiri’s life quest is to become productivity and achievement world-class expert to empower others to achieve their full potential.

If you liked this post, then definitely follow this blog on G+.

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Why change is so hard and how to make it happen is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

One Minute To-Do List method is perfect for people who want to quickly start using some proven organizing system, instead of doing things haphazardly and randomly on their own, or learning some complex organizing system.

One Minute To-Do List approach is very simple compared to both GTD and “Master Your Workday Now”. And since it is so simple, I will explain it to you – along with some of my own insights and remarks – and show you exactly how to use it with Swift To-Do List.

Once you read this this post, you will:

1. Learn the proven One Minute To-Do List method
2. Know exactly how to use it with Swift To-Do List for Windows

But what this really means to you is that you will get your workday and life under control and bring intelligent system into your to-do lists. Your to-do lists will finally help you to eliminate stress, not add to it!

I’m so glad that Michael Linenberger developed this simple method that I can now teach to you. Sure, perhaps the method could be even little bit simpler, but I believe that anything simpler probably wouldn’t work. This is as simple as it gets. Do you know the 80/20 principle? 20% of the effort will bring you 80% results – and that’s exactly what One Minute To-Do List is about.

Michael is a truly brilliant guy. This method is backed up by a real-world experience of him as a very successful coach, seminar organizer and best-selling author, who has helped 10.000s of individuals to eliminate stress and become organized. It really works, and it is proven. Michael trains employees of Microsoft, GE, GE, US Coast Guard, and other organizations. And I really believe that you can reap the 80% benefits of his expertise by learning this simple method.

We will cover 4 areas here: Prioritizing Tasks, Capturing Tasks, Reviewing Tasks, and Keeping the List Reasonable. Feel free to skip the “Why this works” box for each area, although the boxes can provide you with better understanding.

You can start using this method today. Just follow the instructions. Let’s get going!

1. Prioritizing Your Tasks

The One Minute To-Do List method works with just 3 task priorities, all based on urgency:

1. Critical Now
2. Opportunity Now
3. Over the Horizon

The Critical Now priority is for tasks that are urgent and must be completed today. At any point, you shouldn’t have more than 5 tasks with this priority. This priority should be used only when necessary. If any action is not urgent and doesn’t absolutely have to be done today, then don’t prioritize it as “Critical Now”. It is perfectly OK to not have any “Critical Now” tasks.

Opportunity Now is for tasks that you would like to do today or this week, given the opportunity. You shouldn’t have more than 20 tasks with this priority.

Over the Horizon is for everything else. It’s great for tasks that are not concerning you right now, but that you don’t want to lose. You will revisit these later.

Why this works: Prioritizing by urgency makes much more sense than prioritizing by importance, because we tend to think that nearly everything is important. There is always some reason why any particular task is important. Yet, if everything is important, nothing really is. Also, it is the urgent tasks that are the most stressful. You simply need handle these first in any case. Mark Forster (Author of “Do-It Tomorrow”) also agrees that prioritizing by importance is a guaranteed failure. If you stop doing do the less-important things, they will eventually pile up and clog up your work.

How to implement this with Swift To-Do List: Because Swift To-Do List is very flexible, there are multiple ways of implementing this. You could either edit the inbuilt task priorities using menu Manage – Priorities, or, you could create a separate to-do list for tasks of each priority. Let’s go with the priority customization here, as that will allow you to use the to-do list tree for something else than priorities (e.g. project/area categorization).

Start Swift To-Do List (Download it if you haven’t already). Then, use menu Manage – Priorities:

This is how the default priorities look like:

Let’s delete the “High” and “Low” priorities, so only “Highest”, “Medium” and “Lowest” remain. Then, we will rename these remaining priorities:

1. Edit the “Highest” priority and rename it to “Critical Now”.
2. Edit the “Medium” priority and rename it to “Opportunity Now”.
3. Edit the “Low” priority and rename it to “Over the Horizon”.

This is how it should look once you are done:

And hey, feel free to change the colors. It’s your to-do list after all!

2. Capturing Your Tasks

• Always use the next action necessary to accomplish the task as the task name. That way, all task names will be actionable. It will be obvious what you need to do to move things forward.
• All your tasks should be in one place. The best place is your computer.
• All new incoming tasks should be put into your to-do list, regardless the source (email, phone, notes from co-workers or family members, meetings).

Why this works: Having actionable task names removes friction when it’s the time to actually do the task. You won’t have to think about what’s the next step, and it will be less intimidating. Having all your tasks on your computer is important, because your computer is the place where you carry out most of your work. Even if you would have your to-do list somewhere else, you would still need it on your computer. To-do list software has many advantages over paper to-do list. You can easily re-prioritize things, easily capture new tasks, write notes for each tasks, create reminders or recurring tasks, attach files and emails to your tasks, email tasks to others, and many other advantages. If you ever need a paper to-do list, you can simply print it. Mobile devices are useful for capturing new tasks, which you can put later into your main to-do list on your computer.

How to implement this with Swift To-Do List: Not only you should put all new incoming tasks into Swift To-Do List, but you should move all your existing tasks and lists into Swift To-Do List as well. This includes any tasks you have on your phone, on paper, in text files on your computer, or in other software.

To quickly enter multiple tasks, use menu Task – Add Multiple Tasks (Ctrl + H), then enter one task per line. If your tasks are in other software or spreadsheet, you can usually export them to CSV, and then import the CSV file into Swift To-Do List by using menu File – Import Wizard.

With Swift To-Do List, it is especially simple to create tasks from emails. If you use Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, The Bat, or other desktop email client, you can just drag & drop the emails into Swift To-Do List to create tasks. Here is a quick video how to create tasks from emails.

3. Reviewing Your Tasks

You should review the “Critical Now” tasks about once per hour.

You should review the “Opportunity Now” tasks once per day or more often.

You should review the “Over the Horizon” tasks once per week.

Why this works: If you review your urgent tasks often, you will feel in control, always know what needs to be done, and therefore greatly reduce stress. But it’s not enough to review just the urgent tasks, because non-urgent tasks will eventually become urgent too. You need to “catch” these before they get the chance to become urgent, and that can be accomplished with the daily and weekly reviews. Additionally, the reviews will help you to constantly re-focus to adjust your efforts. If you are focused on the right things at the right moment, you will be very efficient and productive.

How to implement this with Swift To-Do List: First, to be able to quickly review the Critical Now tasks, learn to use the global hotkey for quickly displaying Swift To-do List. This will allow you to review your tasks as often as you need. The default hotkey is Ctrl + Alt + S, and can be changed using menu File – Options. (In the Options window, it is located in the Hotkeys section.) Start using the hotkey often. It is useful especially whenever you are not entirely sure what to do next, and/or if you get distracted or interrupted.

Second, make it a habit to review your Opportunity Now tasks either when you start your workday or when you finish it.

Third, create a recurring weekly task to remind you to review all your Over the Horizon tasks. To do that:

1. Click the Add Task button.
2. Then, in the Add Task window, enter the task name: “Review all my Over the Horizon tasks”
3. Select the Priority – this task will have the “Over the Horizon” priority.
4. Go to the Recurrence tab, select “Weekly” as the interval, and in the Action dropdown, select “Set undone and remind me”. This way, Swift To-Do List will remind you once a week to review all your Over the Horizon tasks.
5. Press “OK” to add the task.

4. Keeping the List Reasonable

With a little discipline, it’s easy to stick to the rules of having no more than 5 tasks with the Critical Now priority, and no more than 20 tasks with Opportunity prioriy Now. If you have more than that, simply move some tasks to the lower (less urgent) priority.

The real problem here is that your list of tasks with “Over the Horizon” priority can quickly grow out of proportions. This is a problem, because you want the weekly review to be fast and easy. No one wants to read hundreds of irrelevant tasks.

To keep things manageable, Michael Linenberger recommends using the Start Date field for this purpose. Using the following clever technique, you can defer some Over the Horizon tasks for later review. That way, your list of Over the Horizon tasks that you review weekly won’t become too long. This is how it works:

First, all new tasks should have the Start Date set to today.

Second, all tasks that have Start Date in the future should be hidden.

Third, you can start deferring tasks by setting their Start Date to future. So, if don’t want to (or need to) review some tasks for some time, then set its Start Date to a future date. This will hide the task, and when that particular future date comes, this task will start appearing on your to-do list again.

Why this works: The number 1 reason people abandon a to-do list or organizing system is because they get overwhelmed. They put in too many tasks – and the once helpful tool now just adds to their stress, instead of reducing it. That’s why it’s important to regularly delete irrelevant tasks from your to-do list, and hide things that you don’t need to worry about for now. That way, your to-do list will stay relevant, up-to-date and useful.

How to implement this with Swift To-Do List: First, to make sure new tasks get the “Today” Start Date automatically set, do this: Use menu Manage – Columns, and enable the Start Date field (if it’s not already enabled). Then, use menu File – Options, and in the New Tasks tab of the Options window, select “Today” upon “Start Date”, as shown below:

Second, to hide all tasks with Start Date set to a future date, we will create a new filter: Use menu Manage – Filters, then click Add. In the Add Filter window, check “Start Date” and select “Today”. At the bottom, check “Include tasks with expired dates” and “Include tasks with unspecified dates”. Name the filter “Started” (or anything else) and click OK:

After you add this filter, apply it the main window by clicking the Filter toolbar button:

That’s the whole setup part. Now, every time you want to defer any task for a future review, edit it, and set its Start Date to the desired future review date. That will immediately hide it, and the task will start re-appearing in your to-do list on the future date.

And by the way, to move multiple tasks to another priority (e.g. from Opportunity Now to Over the Horizon), select them (e.g. using Ctrl + Click), then right-click them, and use Batch Edit – Priority in the popup menu.

And that’s it!

We’ve now covered all 4 main components of the One Minute To-Do List system: Prioritizing, Capturing, Reviewing, and Deferring. You are ready to use it. Just stick to the simple rules described in this short guide and you will reign over chaos and improve your life. For the best results, re-read this guide a week later or so once you have some experience with the system.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me, or submit a Reply in the form below. I am here to help. I am also very much interested in your results, so don’t hesitate to let me know them once you try this.

And by the way, this is what Jason, one of our customers/fan wrote me recently as reaction to this post:

I’ve read most of your blogs over the past couple of months as I’ve been looking for ways to calm down the task crisis that I’ve had. They have been very helpful and I thank you for taking the time to post them all! The One Minute To-Do List blog [post] is what finally clicked with me and that’s when I finally broke down and bought the Ultimate Edition.  I’ve been using ideas from that along with my own tweaks to help organize all the tasks I have for all the work and personal projects that I have going on.  I love how I can set a new start date to review something in the future and know that it won’t be forgotten nor in the way as I focus on my current tasks.

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One Minute To-Do List is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog