When you work for yourself, it can be hard to force yourself to stay on task and stay as productive as you’d like to be. One thing I’ve found to be really useful in keeping me focused is my to-do list.

I often get distracted by new and shiny things – much like the dog from “UP”…SQUIRREL! I believe that if I were born today I’d be on ritalin for sure (thank goodness I dodged that bullet!). Without going too far off topic, I really view this attention-deficit-type way of thinking as a positive thing – if I can harness it properly.

But unharnessed, I often find that while I’m waiting for a page to load, file to backup, or program to open (which can be fractions of a second), I’ve already wandered off to Twitter or Facebook to “kill time” while I’m waiting. By the time the page loads, I can find it hard to remember exactly what I was working on when I started, and I end up losing 5 minutes instead of just the 10 seconds it took to load a page.

Bring in the To-Do list! My to-do list gives me something to glance at, remind myself what I am working on, and re-focus quickly. I use this technique hundreds of times per day so it has to be quick in order to be effective.

Separate To-Do Lists:

As I touched on before, I have a mind that likes to wander and can be very imaginative – which is a double-edged sword. It gives me tons of inspiration to work on for new ideas and code inventions but I can also and up wasting a lot of time just sitting and thinking. One way I’ve found to take advantage of these thoughts, but not let them kill my productivity on current projects, is to create a SEPARATE to-do list for the long term and the short term.

I call the long term one my “Long Term To-Do List” (creative, I know). This is for ideas I know will take a lot of time and need to be thought out more clearly before starting them.

My short term list is called my “Immediate To Do” list and it gets updated dozens of times per day as I accomplish different micro tasks.

This way, I have a place to put my “Big Idea” thoughts AND a place to put the things I really need to accomplish TODAY.

I have been using Evernote for my To-Do lists lately – which is great because it syncs to my iPhone – which allows me to be anywhere when I come up with a “Big Idea” and write it on my iPhone quickly – and when I get back to my desk I can re-format the text more clearly and have it ready when I need it. Evernote also sits conveniently in my dock at the bottom of my screen so I can “flip” to it hundreds of times per day to help me re-focus after getting distracted.

Having a place to put my tasks and ideas has really helped me to be more productive, capitalize on many ideas, and even sleep better at night!

I hope these little tips can help you to stay productive as well – especially if you have a mind that wanders like I do.