As a high school senior, I and thousands of other students across the country have come to realize that we had no clue what we were in for. The romanticism of senior year has flooded our minds: senior sunrise, football games, and more. But as the first semester has gone in full swing, things aren’t looking so promising.
As seniors, we have a lot more expectations than just applying for college or preparing for life beyond high school that don’t get the recognition they deserve. By senior year, many of us have acquired leadership positions in clubs and sports, are older siblings, are taking harder classes than ever before, and are stuck running errands as we are finally licensed. The responsibilities are endless.
I’ve found that with this much on my plate, going off of memory won’t cut it. Using an assignment notebook won’t cut it. Even my Google Keep with all of my assignments organized by class, color, deadline, and description will not cut it. What will cut it? Races. Specifically, to-do list races.
I have laid out my life in my Google Keep, organized and updated every second of the day. Still, I simply cannot seem to make good decisions when it comes to what work I do when.
There is something special about making a to-do list rather than having all of your work sitting in front of you and picking the order in which you go. The process of making a to-do list requires a lot of thought, making your work more productive. Let me lay it out for you:
- Deadlines: As you make your list, it is important to consider deadlines, prioritizing work that is due sooner rather than later.
- Time spent: As an athlete and leader in multiple clubs, considering how much time I am able to dedicate to my work each day is important. Thus, I might consider doing smaller assignments (that are high priority) on a day that I have a match, and leave things such as essays and larger assignments (that I have some time to complete) to be done the next day after practice
- Motivation Level: Chances are right as you start your to-do list, you will have a lot of motivation and energy, determined to check everything off. Considering your motivation level might lead you to put harder assignments that require more brain power (not necessarily more time) higher on the to-do list so that you can save the easy stuff for later.
Intentionally considering these factors as you decide your workload can create a much more productive work session.
Now that we’ve created our lists, where are we finding the motivation to actually complete it? Peer pressure. Now, I don’t mean out of fear and embarrassment, but rather friendly competition among your friends. There is a certain type of comfort in knowing that your friends are struggling with you, giving you motivation to keep working. A no-stakes, motivation booster pushing you to keep going.
My friend and I came up with this idea a few weeks ago, as we had made a plan to spend the entire day at the library with goals to finish essays for multiple colleges, study for tests and quizzes, finish assignments, and plan for club meetings that we have to run in the following week. Both of us being motivated by competition, we decided to write our to-do lists on the board and race.
Here is what it looked like:
This was all we needed. Our competitive nature took it from there and suddenly we were checking things off left and right. We had officially cracked the code to our productivity. Since then, it has been a series of to-do list races among my friends.
We’ve even included virtual ones for days we are working from home: same motivation, same productivity. We get notifications from the notesapp when something is checked off, and we like to send each other text updates
throughout the night to notify the other of a completed task. All of this within itself creates an encouraging and motivating working environment amidst all of the stress and responsibilities that we have been bombarded with in recent months.
The criteria for a successful to-do list race is simple:
- Competitive and Motivated Friends: This type of race needs a community of like-minded individuals. Motivated, encouraging people who are going to push you forward. As seniors, we all are working with similar responsibilities and it is critical that we push each other.
- Lists of similar extensivity: I’m not sure if extensivity is the word I’m looking for here, but each person’s lists must be of similar difficulty. This doesn’t necessarily mean of similar length, but similar timeframes and complexity to the assignments. For example, if I’m doing my Online PE homework, which comes out to be 4 different tasks on my to-do list while my friend is completing one essay for a school that they are applying to, that doesn’t mean that I am putting on more work than they are because of the difficulty and complexity of both of our tasks.
- Reward! Everyone has been working very hard to get everything done. Our rewards so far have consisted of a trip to sephora after the library, dairy queen, and starbucks the next morning before school.
Overall, a to-do list is so much more than just a list of tasks. Don’t underestimate the power of them, and I hope that you guys consider giving this race a try to increase your productivity.
I love your blog topic because I absolutely love your take on to-do lists. I personally love to do lists since they keep you organized and productive. Your take on each specific part of a to- do list is extremely interesting to see because it shows just how much thought and effort can actually go into a to-do list. Especially the part about peer pressure. Although people normally say that peer pressure is a bad thing, I love your take on how peer pressure can be useful when needing to get things done. Honestly, from personal experience, working with you and making a to-do list helped me be extremely efficient with my work since it gave me motivation to finish.
Even though I’ve been losing all of our todo-list races recently, I definitely agree with how effective it is. I will say, I have some complaints with poor sportsmanship (not pointing any fingers but some tasks may be a little faulty or less extensive). I’ve always been adamantly against using assignment notebooks, and as much as my parents try to make me use one I end up just using my memory. As a result, I do forget a lot of things, but my backpack is lighter because of it. Google keep has also been good, but sharing todo lists in general has been incredibly effective. So far, my only complaint is that sometimes I’ll just sacrifice my productivity and time management to have an easier race. If I just push things to later days, I’ll have less things to check off and end up dusting you in the race. Otherwise, these races are clearly a net benefit in this crazy time of year.
Samika, your blog definitely led me to redefine my opinion on to-do lists. I’ve traditionally thought of keeping a list as tedious(the immediate image coming to mind being those middle school assignment notebooks), but I love how you were able to put a fun twist on to-do lists. The perfectly aesthetic and color coded Google Keep, the competitions with friends, and the thought of enjoying a reward after completing tasks has definitely got me sold. It’s amazing how you and your friends were able to turn the traditionally stress-inducing peer pressure into something that not only motivates you but makes doing work more interesting and exciting. I also liked how you included tips on how to construct a to-do list, especially how you suggested prioritizing tasks that are more depleting on the to-do list to help motivate yourself to do those first. Personally, I’m always procrastinating and leaving those tasks that need more brain power to the end, which leads into an endless cycle of these higher-difficulty tasks never getting done until the last minute. I’ll definitely try making a to-do list to help fix this, and I look forward to also trying the competition idea next time I study with my friends. This post was short and concise, but also able to teach me a lot, great job!
I really appreciate your blog topic because I think it relates to nearly all of the seniors reading it, I know I relate to it a lot. I too have found that keeping a planner can be helpful in keeping track of things. However, my small 6×6 planner usually can’t contain the insane amount of events and tasks that quickly fill up my schedule. With that, I like your suggestion of using Google Keep to organize these tasks more thoroughly, especially by color coding your classes. Additionally, your suggestion for estimating the amount of time you should spend on a task could be really helpful for me to employ. I tend to know what needs to get done, but without a timeline for it I struggle on being efficient with my time. Overall, this has provided me insight into how I can improve my work habits and I know your advice will benefit me immensely.
Samika, I aspire to make to-do lists like yours! I have seen your Google Keep, and it is so aesthetically-pleasing, color-coded and everything. Personally, I like to use a planner, but with so many items on my checklist, it has become a daunting task to pull it out and write down everything I need to do. Unfortunately, on most days I find myself resorting to mental to-do lists which gets very overwhelming. I appreciate your insights on crafting a good to-do list, and I want to incorporate them so that I can be more productive. One of my biggest struggles is being inefficient with my time; I find myself sitting down to do homework and quickly getting distracted by my phone. I think that if I shut my phone off, considered what I need to prioritize, did hard assignments first like you recommended, it would be a much quicker and more manageable process. I also like your efforts to make your to-do lists a fun activity, rather than something that is dreaded; I’m sure it helps you get a lot more done!
This is a valuable topic of discussion and would definitely be helpful to the unorganized individual or perhaps even the semi organized individual. There are important aspects addressed and elaborated on. Deadlines, time spent , motivation, etc. Thanks for sharing. This was helpful.