Event Planning To Do List: Fill & Download for Free

“Have sex in the afternoon! Smoke pot! Snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef! That was my bucket list when I retired three years ago at age sixty-three. I wanted to reinvent myself. But could I? Maybe the years of sleep deprivation, paying college tuition, and the corporate rat race killed my initiative? Or perhaps I just got old? I struggle some days from a shitty night’s sleep. On other days, I feel like Superman, strong and invincible.(Photo: Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia)God blessed me with a good temperament. I wake up at 5:45 am. For the next few hours, I listen to music and write. My mood is calm. I feel so much gratitude for my life that sometimes, my eyes well up. According to the book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, I show love by acts of service, so my wife wakes up every morning to a hot mug of coffee on her nightstand.In a similar vein, our family donates annually to charitable causes such as social justice, food bank, political organizations, anti-discrimination, candidates, environmental, medical research, Heifer International, Woman’s March, to name a few.(Photo: Thin crust pizza with charred air bubbles)Fifteen years ago in Rome, Italy, I tasted a Neapolitan pizza cooked in a wood-burning oven. My life’s mission is to make a great pizza using a home oven. Eventually, I purchased two pizza cookbooks: The Elements of Pizza by Ken Forkish and The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. Using their techniques, I’ve hosted dozens of pizza parties for friends and family; made over one hundred pizzas from scratch. Whenever I want to relax for one or two hours, I put on some music, break out the kitchen scale, start weighing the yeast, flour, salt, water, and make pizza.(Photo: My Facebook and Instagram Jerusalem social media post)I believe the social media revolution is the twenty-first century equivalent of the industrial revolution. That’s why I invested in a smartphone and taught myself how to post and edit photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.With three adult children in our family, social media is an integral part of how we communicate, celebrate, connect with the world. Being isolated for hours playing Candy Crush is not the goal. Sharing posts of family events, celebrations, concerts, restaurant meals, to name a few, is a way to connect with the people we love.I enjoy the easy access to movies, music, books, podcasts, and news in the palm of my hand. You might say today’s smartphone is “the remote control to your life.”(Photo: That’s the author burning calories at the gym)I committed myself to maximize my quality of life with good nutrition and exercise. I still like to drink tequila, eat burgers, and take four-day breaks from training. But these preferences are the exception and not the rule. As long as I eat “clean” seventy-five percent of the time, I allow myself to cheat meals. For fitness, I mix in cardio, resistance training, and stretching two to three times per week. I play tennis for two days. Depending on how I feel, I will have rest days.(Photo: Bookclub selections and other favorites of mine)My book club meets once a month. We read a popular book, gather at one member’s home, eat dinner, and discuss the book. There are eight gentlemen in the club: three doctors, two lawyers, one geologist, one financial analyst, and one sales manager, all retired. Our last book was The Road To Eternity by Tim Egan. The satisfaction I get from our discussions is less about the book and more about our friendship. We drink; we laugh; we talk. It’s an excellent activity because you socialize with intelligent and cordial friends and commit to reading a new book every month.(Photo: Competitive doubles tennis is the highlight of my week)I play tennis twice a week. All the players are retired gentlemen in their sixties and seventies. What I love about tennis is it takes you out of your comfort zone. Hit a winning shot, and you are the hero. After tennis, we get lunch together. Once I get home, I ice my back and knees to reduce any inflammation and begin my recovery. Usually, I fall asleep and nap for an hour as part of my recuperation process.

Effective time management throughout your day is the best guarantee to high quality sleep.Learning to properly understand time management will help you take control of your busy day and give you ample time to be more thorough and intentional with your bedtime routine.The next 5 tips are great to take into consideration when understanding time management:1. Organize YourselfMake the daily use of an online calendar become a habit. Online calendars are especially useful because they are easy to reach from any mobile device, and will easily allow you to organize any meetings, deadlines, appointments, set up reminders, create time blocks, and schedule both recurring events as well as long-term plans.2. Prioritize TasksPrioritizing tasks wisely is one of the best things that you could do to give your day a harmonious flow because it will allow you to assess which tasks hold the most importance and which tasks are non-essential and therefore can be removed altogether.Once you’ve determined which tasks are the most challenging and will require the most of your time and energy, place them at the top of your list and do them at the beginning of your day, for that is when you will have the most energy to complete them.3. Set Time Limits And Take BreaksSetting time limits for completing your tasks will help you be more efficient with your time, and therefore force you to be more focused. Setting time limits will also remind you that there is an end in sight to the current task you’re working on, this will help your to-do list feel less daunting.It is also important to plan breaks between tasks, that way you can give yourself some time to clear your head and come back to your tasks refreshed.4.Outsource (if you can)Outsourcing is one the biggest secrets for successful time management. If you are in a position to delegate tasks to other people on your team, or even hire experienced outside help, this will give you the opportunity to prioritize the more important tasks that require the most of your time and thorough attention.5. Plan AheadAt the end of each workday, make it a habit to solidify a to-do list for the next workday. This will help you end your day stress-free while also giving you a clear plan of what your next work day will look like. Not having to spend time the next day planning out a to-do list will save you a lot of time and will let you hit the ground running.

Before joining Quora, I did everything I could to organize every aspect of my life. When I was in college, I used to plan out every day in the Notes app of my phone. Each day of the week had its own note, which would include my hour-by-hour plan for the day. If I had down time, I would write down exactly what I would do during that down time (“study for psych exam,” “prep lunch,” “get packages,” etc.). I also had a to-do list of every school assignment, updated with everything at least a month in advance. My friends were impressed but also thought I was insane.I joined Quora five months ago. In these five months, I have let go of those hyper-organization tactics, and my quality of life has improved by about 5000% (just an estimate). Life at Quora is fast-paced and ever-changing, and the people here are always full of new, good ideas, and the only way to keep up is to embrace these changes with open arms. For example, in my job in Product Operations, there's no way to predict exactly what each day will bring, so it's important to be flexible. There's no way to write out a to-do list months in advance.Of course, I still keep basic to-do lists and maintain an orderly calendar, but I now gladly welcome spontaneous events that force me to adapt quickly–the same spontaneous events that used to frustrate me back in college because I would have to re-fit them into my carefully mapped out plans.