What does your to-do list look like today? Is it long, short, detailed, written down, in your head? I generally have two going at any one time \u2013 one for personal tasks (on a post-it), the other for work-related items (currently experimenting with Trello). I love lists in general, as I find they give me a sense of order and control. To-do lists, in particular, are helpful when I feel overwhelmed. I find making a structured list of the apparently million things I have to do makes me feel less dispersed, disorganised and fearful of forgetting things.<\/p>\n
However, the list also has a dark side. Like with smartphones and social media, it can be very easy to let the tool we have created to help order our life start to order us about. To-do lists, for many people, can become a source of anxiety, guilt, frustration and overwhelm. This is often the case when the list gets too long, or when we get too attached to finishing the list, or when we feel the list is not of our own making but filled with tasks dictated by our friends, family, the boss, society, or indeed our own inner perfectionist.<\/p>\n
Keeping the list in its rightful place \u2013 a useful tool, not a stick to beat yourself with – can be achieved, however, with a few mental adjustments and some simple re-organisation techniques. Here are some ideas for ensuring the list serves you and not the other way round!<\/p>\n
Any re-thinking of your relationship with the to-do list must start with relinquishing the idea that the to-do list will ever be empty. One of my personal gurus, Richard Carlson, reminds readers in his bestselling Don\u2019t Sweat the Small Stuff<\/em>, \u201cthat when you die, your \u201cin basket\u201d won\u2019t be empty\u201d and that this is, in fact, a good thing. Having stuff on your to-do list means you\u2019re alive and active, that you have projects on the go, that people rely on you. Once you accept that the to-do list will never be blank, you can release the idea of having a perfect day when you finally get it all done and clear the decks. That is simply not possible, nor is it what life should be about.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve got your head round that, there are numerous ways to restructure or reorganise your to-do list to make it feel more manageable.<\/p>\n Turn your to-do list into a plan<\/strong><\/p>\n There is an old saying that coaches love which states that a goal without a plan is just a wish. The same idea can work for The List. The idea is that, wherever possible, instead of adding items to your to-do list, you open your diary and schedule in a slot for doing the task. So, for example, if you have to prepare a PowerPoint for a meeting in two weeks\u2019 time, don\u2019t just write it on the list. Instead, block three hour-long slots in your Outlook planner. You can now mentally take it off the to-do list as the task has been allotted time and scheduled. I do this with a page-a-day diary that serves as my to-do list notebook (yes, I\u2019m completely analogue with these things). This avoids me having one massive to-do list that I have to prioritise every day and gives me short, daily lists so each morning I just look at what I\u2019ve planned for myself and get on with it. When I don\u2019t get everything done, I simply move remaining tasks to another list, depending on when I have time in my schedule. Not every task on the to-do list can be planned in this way, but by working like this for as many as I can, I find that my floating \u201cget that done at some point\u201d list stays very short. Some days \u2013 whisper it<\/em> \u2013 I even eliminate it altogether!<\/p>\n Change the title<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was interviewing for university, a literature fellow had me analyse a poem then asked the slightly sadistic question, \u201cHow would this poem be different if it were called Ten Things to Do in Denver When You\u2019re Dead<\/em>?\u201d Given that it was a love poem about Anne Boleyn by 16th-century writer Thomas Wyatt, even my jaw-achingly nervous 17-year old self was able to recognise and articulate that the title change would make a world of difference to the reader\u2019s expectations of the text and its meaning.<\/p>\n Changing the title of your to-do list can have a similarly huge impact on how you relate to it. What happens when you change \u201cTo do\u201d into \u201cCould do\u201d, or \u201cMight do\u201d? How does that alter the way you look at the list? Clients who put this into practice tell me that, even though the importance or necessity of the tasks on the list has not changed, this new title makes them feel lighter and less beholden to the tyranny of the list. The linguistic shift turns obligation into possibility.<\/p>\n This is a particularly powerful tool if you have a \u201cshould do\u201d list that you run in parallel to your to-do list. That one\u2019s particularly pernicious. A client taking a sabbatical year to retrain while her wife continues working told me recently, \u201cI feel like I should be making dinner every night\u201d. When she reframed that to \u201cI could now make dinner every night\u201d, what felt like a guilt-provoking obligation became simple one of many options. She also remembered that she actually enjoys making supper, but by \u201cshoulding\u201d on herself about it, she had turned it into a chore. So, another alternative is to re-name your list the \u201cI want to\u201d list, or the \u201cI get to\u201d list. This takes it a step further and turns obligation into a pleasure. This works for me when it comes to particularly tedious tasks. \u201cBook my daughter a dentist appointment\u201d becomes \u201cI want to take care of my daughter\u2019s teeth and am lucky to be able to do so\u201d. \u201cI have to do my tax declaration\u201d becomes \u201cI get to declare taxes for money made doing work I love\u201d. It sounds slightly Pollyanna-ish, perhaps, but much of the time, it truly does help re-frame the list and my relationship to it.<\/p>\n