Stretch Goals

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Step back and think about the most important things in your life—but how to do it effectively? Here is an approach that might appeal to you:

Most people use to-do lists simply as ways to keep track of their tasks - an exterior memory device, in other words.

But studies show that the most productive people use (and write) to-do lists differently. Productive people use to-do lists as devices that force them to think about their PRIORITIES, rather than simply keeping track of tasks.

This often occurs because productive people force themselves to write to-do lists with their biggest, most important goals at the top of the page. Within psychology these are known as 'stretch goals', and usually they are the kinds of things we write at the bottom of a to-do list (if we write them down at all), and then promptly never look at again. But productive people put those stretch goals front and center, at the top of the page, where they will see them every time they glance at their to-do list.

And then, they do something else that makes the to-do list into a 'contemplative routine', they regularly ask themselves if what they are doing right now lines up with their stretch goal. If it doesn't, they shift to another task. And they also force themselves to re-write their to-do lists everyday, and force themselves to ask 'is my stretch goal from yesterday still my most important task today? Or have I learned something new that ought to cause me to shift my priorities.'

In other words, productive people don't simply use to-do lists as memory aids. Instead, they transform them into contemplative devices, and they make to-do list writing into a contemplative routine, that forces them to think about their priorities, and that forces them to ask themselves, throughout the day, 'is what I'm working on right now really the best use of my time?'

The source. (I can't properly link to the text—which is a short piece at Quora by a certain Charles Duhigg, New York Times staff writer and author of Smarter, Faster, Better.