If you're having difficulty completing tasks that you assign yourself on your to-do list, you're not alone. Many people have trouble keeping up with their to-do lists, and these are tips that will benefit both them and you. There are a number of relatively simple steps you can take so that you're much more effective when you try to accomplish the tasks you have on your to-do list. Here are two suggestions to help you complete your tasks much more efficiently and quickly than you had been able to before you implemented them.

Don't Bite off More Than You Can Chew. If tasks on your to-do list are too big to accomplish at once, they might leave you feeling overwhelmed so that you can't even get started. By contrast, smaller steps are much easier to take care of and still move you closer to the results you want. Take a moment to sit down and take a look at the big tasks on your to-do list and then break them down into smaller steps; these will be much more manageable and easier to accomplish for you. Once you've broken them down, assign them to your to-do list on different days; some will stay on today's list, while others can move to another day.

Even these smaller steps will feel like accomplishments, and you won't feel trapped or overwhelmed by having to try to accomplish a much larger task you might not have time to do all at once. For example, instead of saying that you're going to "do some marketing-related work," you could say instead, "Do some research on my top three competitors," "plan the first three steps of my sales process," "get in touch with clients or potential clients," or, "write a press release."

Forgo Things That Waste Your Time. You probably have a lot to do every day; even so, you can find yourself wasting time by doing things that can wait until later. This type of "time wasting" behavior can severely cut into the time you have so that you don't have enough to do what you really need to do. Consider such Time wasters as distractions, interruptions, telephone calls or e-mails, meetings, or a simple distraction; and other things can waste time you could be using better.

Take a moment to sit down and figure out which are your biggest time wasters, then eliminate them one by one so that you have more time to do what you need to do. These time wasters can also waste both energy and productivity, so that you have less time to get done what you need to do, and you are much less efficient besides.