To Do or Not To Do - That is the Question

It's a Monday morning. I arrive to work early, about 7 am, like I usually do. I help with prepping flowers, getting the sales area organized, give some direction to the staff and then head up to the office to get my own work done and that gets me to thinking. Once I am able got get up to the office, I start by reviewing my To Do List. I look at what's been done, what needs to be done and add any items that I now know need to be done. I've tried putting my list on the computer but the truth is I love the act of writing it down on paper. It just makes it more real to me. And so, the inspiration for this blog!

I'm a big believer in To Do Lists. For me, they help me organize my thoughts and prioritizes my responsibilities. If you own a flower shop or any small business for that matter, you probably walk around feeling overwhelmed. Why? That's because as a small business owner it's easy to get sucked into the vortex of day to day operations and depending on the size of your business, you may or may not be able to break away to do all those things that need to get done, that can only get done by you!

Back to the do list. I love mine. I have it organized into three main categories. First is Marketing. I put that one on the top because advertising and marketing is a big part of my job and it needs to get done each day or the phones will not ring. Phones not ringing, very bad so I make that the most important thing on my To Do list each day.

For example, what is on my marketing to do list right now is to write a blog (Yay, I'm doing that now), create my Mother's day category for the website, look at a newspaper proposal sent to me to determine if I want to spend any of my ad dollars with them, work on creating my podcast and contact the person who was supposed to schedule with me to create my shop videos for Superpages but never called. A nice long list and all very worth while items that should be done soon. Next on my to do list is Weddings and Events. These are all  the things I need to do for my brides and other events coming up. This includes reminders to type proposals, update proposals, order product  for events, etc. Right now I owe proposals to Cristan, Kuang and Carolyn and I need to look into pink feathers for someone I am meeting with tomorrow. You get the idea but they are very important and all part of my responsibility. Next is Misc. This includes all the stuff I need to get done and that I'll forget to do without something to prompt me. Right now this category has on the list: Plan a grand reopening for our Yardley shop (we just relocated in February), plan employee meeting, put an ad on Craigs list for a new designer, redo the designer hard goods pricing books, review March's issue of Floral Management (I'm on the advisory committee) and down load floral pictures so that I can post them to my wedding website, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts.

Wow, that's a lot to do! But this is where the to do list becomes my little life saver. Once it's in front of me, all organize by what type of task it is and broken into easy to digest pieces, it becomes more manageable. As I do each one, I can cross it off and get it off my list. As there are more crossed off items than ones to be done, I start all over with a new, neat to do list. It's perpetual and always changing, which is part of the fun of my job. If you don't currently organize yourself by using a to do list, I urge you to start one. To do or not to do - a To Do List - That is the question and I think the answer is yes.

Do any of you use to do list? Any tips you'd like to share? Feel free to comment!! Thanks for reading! Georgianne