ROYGBIV Your To-Do List?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about being more organized…and rainbows. 🌈
Everyone always looks for hacks on how to do things better, faster, and/or more efficiently — myself included. So, a la The Home Edit (that TV show everyone is obsessed with, myself included) — I was wondering…should we ROYGBIV our to-do lists too?
If you’re not familiar — The Home Edit really does ROYGBIV organization like no other. They literally ROYGBIV items in rainbow fashion when reorganizing spaces in homes or other spaces — from books, to pens, to anything that comes in multiple colors. I ROYGBIV’d my books on my bookshelves too….but I’m thinking of taking it over to my to-do list.
Here’s my proposal for ROYGBIV’ing my to-do list:
Red Zone — Urgent and Important — That stuff your boss or clients want you to get done ASAP, or that you promised but are now overdue in completing to your client. I also as an aside try to make the orange zone stuff never turn to red by planning ahead. Plan ahead and avoid the last-minute crises of too much stuff dropping into your red zone — too much urgent and important is bad for your work product and your soul.
Orange Zone — Important — This is stuff you absolutely must do, but perhaps you have a little heads up or wiggle room — like renewing your professional licenses, continuing education, billing, etc. It’s also client work for those of us in service industries. Swallow the frog stuff. It’s the meat and potatoes of your work. I try really hard now to schedule this time. When I’m working and heads down, I need to concentrate — I shut off the phone. I shut off the email. It’s focused work.
Yellow & Green Zone — New Ground & Start Doing — This is probably my favorite area: the place where you grow ideas and start trying new things. You could think of this as process improvement time, or new products and services time. Google called it 20% time. As a futurist, if I could hang in any particular part of the rainbow, it would definitely be here.
Blue & Indigo & Violet Zone — Low Priority and/or STOP Doing — If you get through everything else, you could get to this area. For me, one example is administration and chasing paperwork. Or, doing work in areas where I know I can have zero impact. These should be the lowest priority items on your list — and if you never get to them — meh….who cares if you’re rocking the rest?
That’s it.
Has anyone else out there tried this? I honestly haven’t thought about it, until now. I think I’m going to reframe my to-do list by zone…I’ll report back on it in the near future. 🌈
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Erin L. Albert is NOT an organization expert — but she’s always looking for hacks to improve this potential powerful skill.
