I have a love-hate relationship with “to do” lists.
On the one hand, I love seeing on paper a plan for the day or the week ahead. I even love more long-term “to do” lists for my life: a larger plan for the whole year of all of the things I should aim to accomplish or even a Bucket List of far reaching and adventurous goals for my lifetime.
On the other hand, I tend to get carried away writing down every single detail of my day and then feel constrained by all of the things I need to accomplish in dedicated blocks of time. Or worse, on days when I don’t accomplish much, I am haunted by the items that were never crossed off my list. I then move them over to the next day and the next with the rising feeling of dread about ever succeeding at anything in my life again.
Not having a list at all is not a solution for me. It leaves me so aimless that I spend more time remembering what I was doing before than what I have to do next — I am busy orienting myself around my projects and not actually working on them.
Lately, my workaround to my productivity trouble has been creating a more relaxed “to do” list and switching what I put on my list. There are some things that arise daily that absolutely must get done — going to the dentist, meeting a deadline at work, hosting or attending an event, for example. These commitments are in my calendar and on my list so that I don’t miss them. I stopped adding to my “to do” list items that I will inevitably accomplish every week — cleaning the bathroom, doing the laundry, getting the groceries. I know that these chores will get done even if I don’t write down a reminder for myself.
The “to do” items that I do put down on my list are aspirational and are meant to push me outside of my comfort zone or help me make progress towards a larger goal. It could be something like: reach out to a stranger on LinkedIn, update the “About” page of this blog, apply for a new job, reach out to a friend you haven’t talked to in a while.
Another change I made is that I now allow myself an entire week as the time frame to accomplish these “to dos.” This way I have a structure and a deadline in place to accomplish my goals on one of the seven available days. If I am low one day and feel like doing nothing, that’s okay. I won’t panic because I have six more days to get to my weekly goals. The goals themselves are also quite varied and it allows me to better choose what I want to accomplish at any given time based on my mood and energy resources. Some evenings I am energized by rewriting my resume for a new job, while other times are better suited for catching up on reading.
When I want to develop a new habit, I set a yearly goal of a number of times I will do an activity associated with it. This year it’s 100 days of yoga. I started in February and have completed four days. If I stick to this rate, it’s unlikely that I will hit my goal of 100 days. But things might pick up. If not, I will honestly be happy with 40 days of yoga completed because this would be 40 times more yoga than I practiced last year.
When goals I set are aspirational, it does not matter to me if I complete them all. What matters is that I move in the right direction and give my attention to things that I have identified are beneficial to me. If I am spending my time on things that enrich and expand my life, it matters not how many items I cross off the list as complete; rather, it matters that I spend time pursuing them at all.
