Upgrade your to-do list

Your to-do list is due for an overhaul. Use some of these tricks to focus your approach. Before worrying about how many things you need to handle each day, first eliminate the things you don’t need to do, says Ray Sclafani, founder of advisor coaching firm ClientWise. The resulting notes will eliminate the things you don’t need to do to carve out the list of the day’s essential items. Another way to think about it: Consider reshaping it as a list of your one vital and six most important tasks. Peak Advisor Alliance provides its coaching clients with a template to help advisors prioritize the most important things to achieve each day. (Peak employees use the list as well.) “Advisors begin each day with several items fighting for their attention and focus,” says Ron Carson, founder and chief executive officer of Carson Wealth Management and founder of Peak Advisor Alliance. The template can help advisors organize their day around their priorities and keep them on-track and focused, he says: “The more an advisor is focused on what they need to complete, they more efficient they become.”