Your Daily Morning Checklist

I am a fan of to-do lists.  Every morning, I consult one to see what I should be doing.  But there is another step I need to do to make sure that tasks that should be there are included.

Other fans of David Allen’s Getting Things Done discipline know that the key to “stress free productivity” is having a system that will present to you what you need to see when you need to see it, and to make sure that the next action on each of your commitments is in front of you as often as practical.  The To Do list is great at telling you what you need to accomplish today, or what your priorities were yesterday.  But what about that thing you committed a month ago to do tomorrow?  Or remembering that thing you need to do every Wednesday? 

It would be great if there was one system into which you can dump everything you need to do, and have it alert you when each item is due.  Like most of you, though, life doesn’t lend itself to that kind of simplicity.  My client relationship management (CRM) system keeps track of what I need to do for clients.  I am doing a little work for Advisors4Advisors.com, and we use a separate system to collaborate, including shared tasks.  There are personal things that appear on my calendar that need doing (did I get my son his graduation present yet?).  Then there are those personal errands that do not have a place in any of those systems.

Though I shouldn’t admit it, I have my own struggles with paper to-do lists.  In the past, I have spent more time than I wanted transferring today’s incomplete tasks to tomorrow’s new list.  During particularly busy weeks, I may even skip that step, and end up by week’s end with half a dozen incomplete lists that need triage and consolidation.  In regard to that particular challenge, I have started moving tasks to the on-line task management system Nozbe.  When I check something off, it disappears that night, and the lists are automatically updated.  I can access tasks at home, on my Blackberry, or anywhere I can an internet connection.  It is an awesome tool, and I recommend it highly.  I am gradually learning to use its powerful features.  But that is beyond the scope of this post.

So I am stuck, like most of you, with multiple systems that each have things that can be missed and cause me to fall short on a commitment.  To bring it all together, I have a simple morning checklist I go through to make sure I know what I need to do.  Nothing complicated, just a quick run down to confirm that I have checked each of the places where I have recorded the promises I have made to myself, my family, and my clients.  Anything coming up on the calendar?  Check.  Client tasks I scheduled for today?  Check.  In five or ten minutes, I can be sure I have not missed anything that needs to happen today.

I have posted the list I use here, and you can probably customize it easily to work for you.  I still have to do a weekly review, but this provides a quick, daily routine to keep me on the straight and narrow between my less frequent, higher level reviews.

Do you have a morning routine to help keep you organized?  I would love to hear your ideas!



Maybe a financial advisor’s most important checklist

This is a blog about checklists as a financial advisor practice management tool, so you might expect that the most important would be about investments or customer service.  In my view, the most important checklist a financial advisor can employ helps assure the next actions receiving precious attention are the ones that contribute the most to the goals of the practice.

And that checklist is the weekly review prescribed by productivity guru David Allen.  It is the single most important way to keep up on your commitments.

My biggest practice management challenge is follow through.  It is to to remember to do things when the follow up doesn't have to be immediate, or when other tasks take higher priority at the moment.  For most of my professional life as a financial advisor, my follow up was terrible.  There are still times it stinks.  And when follow up stinks, customer service stinks.  I have a great assistant, and delegation is the best solution most of the time.  But I still have my own commitments to fulfill.

A well designed and implemented checklist reminds you of the important things that can easily be overlooked, freeing your mind to express expertise and creativity.  Remembering to follow up on the proposal or transfer paperwork I sent a week ago requires neither creativity nor expertise.  Nor is it urgent.  But it is important.   And, without a system to remind me, I would probably drop it.

The weekly review is an inventory of all your outstanding projects and commitments.  Does each project have a next action on your current to-do list? Do you know the next action for each?  Are there deadlines approaching on any of them?

This assumes, of course, that you have all your projects listed in one place.  Collecting your projects is the basis of a "Getting Things Done" system, and the weekly review is its cornerstone.  You can find out about GTD and the Weekly review here.

Miss doing this conscientiously, and you will constantly be compensating.

Running through the checklist that is the weekly review, you are systematically reminded of the commitments you made.  And always being up to date on your commitments is the most important place a financial advisor can be.