Successful People Have This in Common

Are you a list maker? Do you often find yourself spending more time writing your to-do list than you do on actually accomplishing your tasks?

5 Items a Day

Warren Buffet, the most successful investor of all time, sticks to a list of only 5 items at once. The trick is not to fill your list up with too many projects because you will find yourself getting overwhelmed and under-motivated. This approach helps you set a focus for the day and gives you an achievable goal.

Where to Start?

Setting yourself up for success is the most important part. Herein lies the question, “Which five things do I start with?” or “How do I prioritize the millions of things I have to do down to five tasks?” These are fair questions and there is a simple answer, take a moment to break your life up into categories, like a pie chart.

Consider your values and responsibilities. – Family, school, work, fitness, and leisure are a few that people often choose. Other categories might include faith, pets or home improvement. One strategy would be to take the top five categories of your life and tackle only one item in each category per day.

It might look something like this:

1.  Family – Spend quality time playing a board game with my wife and kids tonight
2. School - Study for my MBA classes for 1 hour
3. Work - Make four cold-calls today toward our company competition goal
4. Fitness – Run on treadmill for 30 minutes tonight
5. Leisure – Watch two episodes of my favorite show tonight on Netflix.

If you’re not a list maker- this is a great way to start because you’ve now given your day some direction and have created small, achievable goals to stay on top of all of the important categories of your life.

Stay Motivated

If you get through those five goals and still have time to spare then by all means, spend the rest of your day however you’d like! Just don’t forget to take five minutes to write your list for tomorrow.

You’ll feel great knowing you achieved your goal and you will be motivated to give the next day that same amount of focus and drive.

If you love lists and are looking for more to read, check out this list of mistakes to avoid when buying a home online. If you have a home already, you might like this list of home improvements that can bring the most bang for your buck!