
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. What hacks do you use to make your to-do lists work for you? Let us know in the comments below.ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. So take a deep breath and use these tips to organise your life and work and be more productive. Remember that the idea behind to-do lists is to make you work smarter, not harder. Always keep in mind the golden rule of planning-do not schedule more than 75 per cent of your time into to-do lists. Take a cue from things that you didn’t do on the list and figure out why you couldn’t accomplish them-were you out of time, were they not clear enough, can they be postponed? Use this information well while charting out future lists. Following this routine for a few days will give you an idea about your time, speed in doing particular tasks and also make it easier to identify the most productive hours of the day. Take a look at your list at the end of each day and keep track of how much you have actually accomplished. Accomplishing the hardest task on your list before lunch creates confidence and a ripple effect, stops procrastination and motivates you to get the rest of the things on your list done.

Motivational speaker Brian Tracy follows on this lead and suggests that if we have two frogs on our list, eat the uglier one first.

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do every morning is eat a live frog, you can spend the rest of the day knowing that the worst is over.

Look at the first task you listed out on your 1-3-5 list and get it done before lunch.
