I’ve come to hate to-do lists.
Now that I don’t use them anymore and get to have kind of an “outsider’s” perspective when seeing how they affect my clients — I hate them! They’re sources of stress, uncertainty and overwhelm. They make people feel inadequate. And other than getting things down in writing, they don’t actually help you get anything done!
One major reason is that, while all tasks look the same next to each other on a list, they’re not.
On a to-do list, all tasks take up a short line. But some will take 5 minutes. Others 5 days. Some require your best energy. Others can be done when you’re tired. Some require an office to be open when you make the call. Others can be done late on a Sunday night.
But you don’t know any of that looking at a to-do list. Instead, every single time you look at the list to decide what to do next, you have to do all those mental gymnastics in your head before you even start.
This is why I love throwing tasks in your calendar. By tying a task to a date, time and window of time, you can schedule it for when your energy is best, when the office is open, break a big task down into smaller steps, and decide when to work on it with time before the deadline. ⠀
Then, when that time rolls around, your phone alerts you to do it — letting you skip the mental gymnastics and devote your energy to the task itself.
If you want to try this out, I have a free guide that contains three things you can calendar right now to immediately reduce your stress.
Give it a whirl, and let me know how it goes!
