Overcome To-Do-List Mania!
We have all fallen prey to this trap of creating endless lists of things that need to be done. It starts with the best of intentions, “I don’t want to forget this” or “it will speed up my productivity”. However, then the lists get longer and longer. That’s when things start to get out of control. It can happen so many different ways – we start by becoming dependent on the list to replace our own memory, write every single little thing down. We add huge things to our list that actually cause us to feel weighed down and keep us from moving forward. Before we know it the list is a mile long. There is a solution though, and it’s simpler than you think.
Does it ever stop growing?
You see, I was a chronic “list builder”. I would have lists of things to do today, this week, this month, this year… I had lists for personal tasks as well as business tasks. I even had lists for my lists. The problem was that my lists kept growing and growing. They never seemed to get smaller. Even when I’d accomplish a task I’d add three. There in itself lied the major problem, I was procrastinating on doing the biggies. I’d do quick things that I could knock out without too much effort. Yet I still dreaded reading my 6 page lists, in fact it made me down right sick.
That’s when I heard about “eating the biggest frog first”. The saying was basically that if you get up each morning and the first thing you do is eat a live frog, nothing worse can happen for the rest of the day. Brian Tracy says “that your frog should be the most difficult task on your to do list, the one you’re most likely to procrastinate on”. I took this very seriously and reflected on it. It is true that if you leave the most mundane, difficult or distasteful tasks till later, they’ll loom over you all day and actually drain your energy. You are more likely to put them off indefinitely than get them done, or worse remove them from the list with a guilty conscience.
If on the other hand you get it done first you feel great for having accomplished something big and you feel empowered. You can move forward feeling good and the rest of the things on your list suddenly seem simpler and more digestible. I’ve now put this method into practice and only put things on my list that are absolutely required to be done. I leave the mundane things off as they’ll get done when they get done. This leaves only important tasks and I do the most challenging ones first. I’ve actually gotten so much more done this way and feel great at the end of the day for being so productive. I get way more free time to enjoy and my memory is also improving.
Being a self employed entrepreneur that works from home I have to be disciplined and make sure I get my work done in order to have the results I want. This has proven to be life changing for me and yet it was such a simple adjustment to my daily routines. I now actually only have two very small lists, one for my personal life and one for my business, I like to keep them separate even though I enjoy my business like a past-time. Eat your frog first and watch how much better life and your memory gets.
