What’s the quickest way to get rid of your to-do list once and for all?
Bin it.
Imagine there’s a pile of junk in the middle of your living room. What would you do with it?
Yet, it’s a completely different story with our to-do lists. We frame them and place them among the pictures of our loved ones. Until our to-do’s multiply and squash out of sight the remainders of our private life.
We tend to accumulate all the garbage. And when it no longer fits our metaphorical wardrobes that burst from all the excess content we label everything that popped out as ‘important and urgent’ consequently inviting that to our mental space.
80/20 is insufficient
There’s a reason an 80/20 rule is so popular. In reality, only 20% out of 20% of all things that make it to our lists on autopilot is relevant to our progress. To be efficient, we’ve got to be extremely selective about the tasks we entertain.
Yet, we’re clutching onto the remainder of the clutter. One of the reasons is that we don’t know what to fill an, otherwise empty, space with. And another reason is the perceived necessity of completion giving us a sense of accomplishment. These patterns are so engraved in us that we prefer an illusion of a busy life that spins on autopilot versus putting effort into pressing hard STOP to find out what truly matters and what we could do instead should we not be constantly overwhelmed.
Superheros
Besides, what could be a better opportunity to become an overnight superhero than to win over an endless list of ‘important’ stuff? Fast forward, our mind, in an attempt to repeat that adrenaline rush, pushes us onto a familiar path of overwhelm the moment we clear our lists. Eventually, our to-do list turns into a compulsion — albeit you hate it on a conscious level — like a toxic entanglement that’s trickier to exit with every passing day.
Some of us find it emotionally and mentally disturbing to sit still — whether it’s a part of a natural anxiety or a feeling of guilt from doing nothing ‘useful.’ And yet, there are those, who don’t care less and are chilled regardless of what life throws their way.
Without going into detail about various mindsets, and mental and psychological wiring holding us back — let’s find out how we can achieve what truly matters to us without sacrificing the day-to-day quality of our lives.
The House of Chaos
Imagine walking into a house filled with mess. There are lots of unrelated items all over the floor. Turned-on hobs in the kitchen with four attempted meals yet none is cooked. Wardrobes across all the rooms are about to burst and are held by tiny closets pushing against ajar doors. A leaking roof featuring a massive hole. What would be your instantaneous reaction?
Now imagine it’s your life, how would your brain feel?
In a state of confusion, we tend to turn our lives into chaos, dropping numerous random items on our to-do lists. We attempt to do one thing, but being too impatient for progress we jump to another, then yet another that seems either more appealing or quicker and in the end we stay unsatisfied and hungry. Being disappointed and unfulfilled we stop noticing the issues calling for our immediate attention. And, yet, with no energy left, demotivated, we find quick fixes to hold a system from a collapse.
Assume this is the only house you’ve got. Where do you begin?
Temptation is to stick all the content in the wardrobes, clean the place, and you’re seemingly done. All it takes is to be quick. And, preferably, to get done before you’re hungry or before that hole in the roof deteriorates the property, making it inhabitable or too expensive to fix.
You’ve probably figured that albeit tempting this is questionably a feasible solution. Yet, that’s exactly what we tend to do drafting meticulously our perfect yet endless to-do lists that turn into a goal on their own versus a tool.
Accounting for the fact that you have limited hours, if you persist with your workload quickly, sticking items randomly around, after a momentary satisfaction, soon, you’ll find this approach unsustainable. It’ll happen when you won’t be able to find what you need promptly. Your efficiency will get undermined when one day, in a hurry, you’ll struggle to place things. The items will start getting dropped around again because there’s no space they belong to.
And there’ll be no point in stubbornly or self-devotedly ‘sticking to a new system.’ Because there’s no system!
Chasing Your Tail
Yet, dealing with our projects that’s exactly what we tend to do. First, like obsessed, we try to handle that endless to-do list. Then we enjoy that momentarily relief, seeing we’ve nailed it and now it’s all clean. Then, we promise ourselves not to allow this to happen ever again. A week later we’re in front of a new to-do list that seems to be growing on steroids.
Preoccupied, we might overlook other important stuff or even health-related issues. Under pressure from stress, we start missing out on life. Surely, it doesn’t all happen overnight. At first, we find a refuge in fun occasions to escape puzzling tasks. But then, when it becomes too many of them, we either get buried under their weight or escape that list altogether until certain items start sting calling for our attention.
Where to Start
Some people would be tempted to start with decluttering, while others with fixing the roof. We often tend to run in the most obvious direction. But what if that clatter contains the house paperwork or tools required to fix that roof?
Before defining a project or determining the course of action always start with a vision. To do that, first, get yourself out of the chaos. When we’re inside the problem it often appears bigger than it is. It also paralyses our straight thinking in the face of fear and uncertainty. To come up with possible solutions we need to step back to disassociate from the weight of the problem and gain a fresh perspective.
Coming up with a vision, be mindful of the purpose of every major goal you’re setting. Always ask yourself what achieving that will ultimately give you. If that drives you — you’re on the right path.
Key Inhabitants
As it’s useful to have an idea of your dream house exterior before attempting to fix it, it’s handy to know who will live there, to alter the layout accordingly.
To pick ‘inhabitants’ of your life-house — think of all the areas of your life that matter to you. Be it health, wealth, romantic relationships, family, friends, career — write them all down. Put against each of them a score of how satisfied you are, with 1 being barely satisfied and 10 extremely happy with the state of things.
To achieve rapid progress — pick up to three weakest areas you’re ready to commit to improving now. Consider your current circumstances not only scores and desires. Don’t attempt to change your entire life overnight either. That’s the occasion where it’s ok to take things slowly.
If you start by developing a habit of consistently working on a single area of your life at a time, you’ll see how your entire life will start getting impacted by that. Healthy patterns, similar to unhealthy ones, influence our overall behaviour and, consequently, the quality of our lives.
Defining a Course of Action
Now you’re clear on your inhabitants, it’s time to sort the rooms out.
When you focus on outcomes, they determine the projects, which break into tasks naturally.
That’s contrary to a rigid to-do-list approach. Until we get a flavour of a project we might assume a different course of action from what’s required.
Besides, we might have overarching projects or issues like that leaking roof that are tricky to place yet urgent. Similar to our patterns or behaviours that hinder our growth. For example, someone might be constantly late. Changing this habit alone could improve the quality of a person’s life and overall progress across a few areas.
On top of that, we require sufficient rest, nutrition, as well as spare time to enjoy ourselves and rejuvenate. We need to account for those areas too. Otherwise, it’d be a miserable existence of a prisoner, never leaving a ‘house,’ which only offers constant maintenance and work.
Yet, we rarely place this sort of item on our lists. Hence, failing to prioritise what matters accordingly and constantly attempting to battle the life that’ll inevitably get in the way.
When DIY is a good term
After deciding on the function of the rooms, it’s time to get clear on the purpose of every wardrobe — equivalents of the projects within the key areas of your life. (Unless you want to end up with a toaster in your bathroom — the usual side-effect of squashing stuff randomly to remove it from sight.)
It might be tempting yet questionably useful to outsource this work. Unless you have an assistant who’s been working with you for 20 years and knows you incredibly well, you’d be the best person to allocate things in a, personally for you, logical way that suits your lifestyle. You’re designing your structure according to your system and personal preferences. A perfect system that doesn’t consider your needs will only last until the next force major: you’d want to drop your slippers where it feels natural to you without learning a new instruction manual, the same as to find a tie quickly before an important meeting. Otherwise, hello Chaos again.
The same is true in life. A renowned guru might suggest that everyone should aim to wake up at 5 am. Yet, if you’re a doctor, who’s constantly on calls or a young parent — that’s not always sustainable. Find the system that works for you. And should your circumstances change it’s ok to reconsider your approach later.
Old Junk in the New Wardrobes
As tempting as it might be to ‘try and finish’ everything on your list, it’s rarely the best use of your time. You might have 15 or 55 outstanding items, yet they multiply at the speed of lighting. So, it’s like chasing a tail.
Once you’re clear with the content and functionality of the wardrobes, it’s time to sort them out. You might have an impulse to get everything out and then allocate the stuff according to the new brief. Not the savviest idea. A scene of a volume can overwhelm you. And, that’s exactly what we do attempting multiple projects at once never finishing either of them in the end.
One Thing at a Time
Start with one. It won’t take nearly as long as if done in parallel with other projects. Once you complete it, you will experience a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, excited to fight the next project.
Some of us are fearful, that while we’re busy with some tasks — others aren’t progressing. The reality is that we can only handle one thing at a time. This book called One Thing explains this concept well.
Multiple Projects: Task-oriented Approach
However, let’s assume for a moment that you’ve got a truly endless wardrobe and need to sort the ones in the kitchen and a bedroom quite promptly too as you start getting hungry and wouldn’t mind some rest.
Focusing on one mega-project while completely abandoning other areas of your life might not be sustainable. If you’ve got a long-playing project, break it into phases or blocks.
For example, if it were a wardrobe, one day you could be sorting top shelves only — a concrete area of responsibility with a measurable outcome and a particular time frame. Tangible results will provide a sense of accomplishment and boost your confidence in your abilities. Then, using a similar approach, move to another project. This way you can take care of multiple areas of your life without a compromise.
Multiple Projects: Time-blocking Approach
Another approach would be blocking one to three hours in your calendar for this project daily and trying to complete as many tasks within that timeframe as possible. A danger with this approach is that you might soon start getting distracted. Things will get in the way. And before you notice your commitment of three hours is nothing more than a formality.
To make this approach work — you need to stick to your schedule fanatically, starting on a dot and finishing on a dot, regardless of whether you’re done with a task, so your other projects aren’t affected.
You know that you only have dedicated hours, so plan your activities accordingly, to fit within the allocated time to ensure you complete all the tasks. It’s also important you address the activities of a relevant project only within a dedicated time-frame.
It’s best to utilise this approach for an ongoing project. An example would be a daily side hustle alongside full-time work. Or, a workout routine to prepare for a marathon — where consistency is the key.
Hidden Sceletons
While a to-do list is a great tool to take stuff out of your head — it’s not a dustbin to pollute it with everything that comes to mind.
The issue with our to-do lists is that many things pop on them without much filtering. As a result, we get frightened seeing all we’ve got to handle before the logic gets its say. Then we start procrastinating and eventually, these lists poison the quality of our lives. READ When Procrastination is the Only Thing You Never Delay
It’s more efficient to follow a vision aligned with the key focus areas of our lives. There, seeing the flaws, we can define the required effort. That leads us to a decision of what to do and when. To-do lists should be no more than a tool to remind us during the day about a few crucial items that’d skip our minds otherwise. We don’t have to put everything there. The most obvious and most important things will get done anyway.
Long-term Projects
Long-term projects might appear as a different story. However, they are not. In this case, create a project log to record all project-related tasks as and when they come to your mind. Review that list when planning your upcoming week. And when picking something to do ensure that a chosen task still serves the purpose of your project. Just because something seemed like the right thing to do a few months ago isn’t necessarily something that should be done.
It’s OK to Save the Ink
To ensure that you don’t end up in the slavery of a new to-do list, it’s useful to recognise that any task — whether written down or not — is necessary only as long as it serves a project. By the end of the day, all that matters is the outcome.
Imagine you’re sorting some legal paperwork out. It’d be redundant to add to your list buying a train ticket at the station to visit your solicitor. Yet, we do record within our lists items like painting the walls, doing our laundry or fixing dinner. Wouldn’t we be able to handle those without written reminders that only cause more stress and anxiety?
Or, is this our way of nourishing the illusion of efficiency? So that we feel we’ve done something the moment we cross that task off our list? That’s a pathway to disappointment. Just imagine you’ve written and crossed over 100 tasks. However, if you haven’t made it to your solicitor and that was your absolute priority — it doesn’t matter how many and which tasks you’ve done. You’ve still failed at accomplishing the most important one, ultimately failing the entire project.
Don’t confuse Could-Do with Must-Do
Contrary to that, imagine you haven’t ticked anything on your list and instead spent a great day with your loved one. Yet, you sent a courier to sign the required paperwork. Does the fact that you had a joyful time and the work done without leaving your place undermine a result?
Efficiency is measured by a what. What have we accomplished? And not by how or how many items got ticked.
Challenge: Completed or Deleted
Experiment with having one-day-only to-do lists.
The rule: you can’t do tomorrow the tasks you haven’t completed today. Whatever is on your list should be either completed or deleted.
Now see how you’d like to amend that list. Has it, suddenly, got shorter? Have fun with it.
