Use 6-Week Sprints

Jason Fried in his book Shape Up makes a great argument.

Use 6-week work sprints. Get a few major tasks done. Focus.

Six weeks is long enough to finish a meaningful project

Six weeks is short enough to see the end from the beginning

Six weeks gives people a deadline to make trade-offs

I have thrown away the traditional to-do list. Gone are the days of endless to-do lists that age like milk.

I now have a Trello board.

I have a column for each of the following categories.

1.) Trashed

2.) Chopping Block

3.) To-Do

4.) In-Progress (current sprint)

5.) Finished

"Good ideas" go into column #3. They do NOT go in progress. Many times, after a few weeks, I realize they aren't such great ideas. They go to column #2. Good thing I didn't waste time on them.

After the current 6-week sprint, I will redo my calendar to focus on new initiatives. I look through the "to-do" list and decide which 1-3 tasks are the "big dominoes" in the business. I focus only on those.

Completing 1-2 major initiatives will drive progress in the business. Focusing on ONLY those objectives will ensure they get done well.

Watch this video (for the full Trello breakdown).

PS - Trello has free version that works just fine... plus a mobile app