This is Stevea Robbins. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

We all know that your to-do list points the way to great results. And when we talk about to-do lists, we revel in how much they help us do. We love checking off those items one by one.

Reserve event space. Check. Ensure proper drainage facilities.

Check. Order two pallets of jello powder drop shipped directly to loading zone. Check.

Requisition clowns. Check. The next thing you know, your checklist is complete and your

childhood dream is about to come true. How lucky you! Maybe not so lucky for the

clowns. Today, however, we're going to put our attention on the items that didn't get done,

and that didn't get checked off, because there's magic there too. To-do lists accumulate.

I'm a compulsive to-do list maker. It's been going on for years. It started simply.

Just a little note. Bring pet goldfish to show and tell. After a few false starts, it became a

small list. Get jar. This time, fill jar with water. Buy new goldfish, put goldfish in jar.

Bring new goldfish to show and tell.

Once you're in the business world, to-do lists become a way of organizing everything that needs

to be done. You might keep your to-do list on paper in a master to-do list system, or you

might keep your to-do list online in an app or a spreadsheet, and then you use some system for going

through your list and deciding what to do next.

Since we generally add items to the list faster than we remove them, however, there becomes a backlog,

and that backlog contains all of those things we haven't done over the years.

If you use an online task list, you might have years worth of tasks on that list.

If you scroll down far enough, you can find them all.

And if you use a paper list or a notebook, you might have dozens of old lists and other notebooks

are on prior pages, with some things crossed out and some things not. So, get them out. We're

...