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

We're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Get It Done Guy. Yay! Oh, there's so much to prepare for. Parties to throw, Oreo ice cream cake to be arranged, episodes to be planned, and zombie reanimation powder to be ordered.

It's clearly time for a list.

And as I pull out my handy-dandy paper to-do list, as you can read about in the episode on

using a paper to-do list, I realize that in 10 years we've explored some of the advanced

ways of creating a to-do list, but we've never covered the basics.

So today, that changes.

A to-do list is a list of tasks to do, and by do, I mean, take action.

As we all recall from second-grade grammar, where Mrs. Johnson used to terrify us into submission

by threatening to conjugate our parts of speech or dangle our participles out the window, action words are verbs, and verbs belong in a to-do list.

It's tempting to just jot down a to-do item that says, zombie reanimation powder, but then when

you actually get to that to-do item, maybe hours or days or weeks later,

you might not remember what you meant by that.

Are you supposed to order more?

Or maybe you get rid of the five years past the expiration date that you have sitting on your shelf?

Or maybe you're supposed to mix some up into a tasty smoothie to serve at funerals.

The verb matters.

So don't just write anniversary party,

Oreo ice cream cake, episodes, zombie reanimation powder. Make sure that your tasks have

verbs attached to them. Throw anniversary party. Arrange Oreo ice cream cake. Plan episodes

and order zombie reanimation powder. Now you'd think that arrange Oreo ice cream cake. Plan episodes and order zombie reanimation powder. Now you'd think that

Arrange Oreo ice cream cake would be a great to-do item. It has a verb. It has a noun. And that

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