An Easy Way To Start Setting Goals

This simple technique goes back to when I was in high school.  The summer after my junior year, a friend helped me get a job at the Boise Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park located near downtown Boise, Idaho, in Julia Davis Park.  The Fun Spot had three kiddie rides, a kiddie roller coaster, a Tilt-O-Whirl, a Ferris Wheel, a miniature golf course, and a snack stand.  Basically, parents with small children would bring their kids there in the summer to let them ride some cheap rides and blow off steam.  A month into working there, for the incredible wage of $2.05 an hour, I was dubbed assistant manager.  That meant I ran the park on the manager's day off.  A month after that, my friend Doug, the manager, found a construction job, and another 17-year-old and me became co-managers.  The next summer, I was the sole manager.  Yes, I ran an amusement park, at age 17.  With that, of course, came responsibility.  The manager before me showed me his technique for dealing with the responsibility. 

Each morning, we'd get there a little bit early, get a Pepsi from the machine, and sit under the tree outside planning the day.  He folded up a piece of notebook paper, wrote Stuff To Do on the top, and listed the things that needed to get done that day, such as mowing a section of the big lawn, putting pine tar on the Ferris Wheel cable, or weeding the flower beds in the miniature golf course.  When I took over, I started making my own list, which soon became my "Stufftado" list.  In essence, it's a series of goals that need to be accomplished that day.  You know what's weird.  If you start using a list like this, it soon becomes fun to scratch things off the list.  The prior manager also told me to put at least one or two easy things on the list, like "going to the bathroom," or "getting a Pepsi and writing my stufftado list."  Why?  Because then you get to immediately check a couple of things off the list, and there's a small sense of accomplishment in doing that. 

When I started getting my act together a few months ago, after a couple years on medication that pretty much turned me into a zombie, I started making my Stufftado list each morning.  At first, I had only a few simple things on it, and a rarely checked them all off.  But it was a start.  Now I look forward to making my list each morning, and I've started making a Stufftado Big List for each week, with goals I need to accomplish in that week.  It's a natural progression, and it gets me psyched to get something done that day.
So... what's on your Stufftado list for today?