Tired Of Being Managed By Your To-Do Lists?
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Do your to-do lists work well for you? Do they support you and your life purpose?
If not, you’re not alone!
Full disclosure: I love making to-do lists and crossing items off as I complete them. It feels really good in the moment, and that’s why I tend to keep coming back for more. It’s quite addictive!
In the last few months, I’ve been running my whole life on to-do lists because I had to handle too many projects in parallel. Using color-coded to-do lists has allowed me to stay on track and to not let things accumulate. It worked - I’ve been productive with the most pressing tasks that had to be addressed.
But looking back, it has not been the most fulfilling way of living my life, mostly because I have not been able to make time for a couple of projects that I deeply care about. I was so focused on working on the most pressing tasks that I postponed and therefore neglected less urgent but very important projects that are integral part of my life purpose and well-being.
That’s what happens when we are managed by our to-do lists. Because we can never complete everything, intentions that we deeply care about tend to get pushed back to the bottom of the list... and postponed over and over.
What’s the alternative?
There is actually another way to organize and complete our tasks – a method that I have actually used in the past and that I have decided to return to, starting this week.
As we plan our day for tomorrow, let’s start by answering these questions:
• How can I organize my tasks by themes or topics?
• What’s one must-do for tomorrow? (or two, or three : )
• How am I going to take care of myself?
• How am I going to take care of my loved ones?
With the answers to these questions in mind, we can schedule blocks of time based on the themes that have been identified and that need to be addressed tomorrow (and the following days). For each theme or topic we can certainly have short lists of tasks to complete, but once we reach the end of the time period assigned to that topic, we move to the next one.
For example, let’s say that our old to-do lists can be reorganized by grouping tasks in the following topics:
• Work Project 1
• Work Project 2
• Work Project 3
• Volunteer Project 1
• Volunteer Project 2
• Self Care
• Relationships
• Household
If our must-do’s for tomorrow are attending two meetings (one for Work Project 2 and one for Volunteer Project 1 for example), working on Work Project 1, and completing two household chores, we could schedule the following blocks of time to address all these tasks tomorrow, in addition to our self-care (something we deeply care about):
• Work Project 1
• Work Project 2
• Volunteer Project 1
• Self-Care
• Household
Therefore, here is how a schedule for tomorrow could look like:
• 8am-9am: Self-Care
• 9am-11am: Work Project 1
• 11am-Noon: Meeting for Volunteer Project 1
• Noon-1pm: Self-Care
• 1pm-2pm: Household
• 2pm-3pm: Work Project 1
• 3pm-4pm: Meeting for Work Project 2
• 4pm-5pm: Work Project 1
• 5pm-6pm: Self Care
Instead of long to-do lists, scheduling blocks of time is more effective because it ensures that all the important topics we care about get the attention they deserve, including our self-care and nurturing our relationships. During each block of time, it’s ok to work with a small to-do list, but when the time is up, we have to move to the next topic. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. This scheduling method is especially relevant during the pandemic, as parents have to take turns with their partner to supervise their children’s online schooling while also being as productive as they can with their own workload and household tasks.
I’m going back to this method this week. Give it a try, and tell me what you think!
