Toss the "To Do List"
Listen: Toss The "To Done List"
What if one tiny shift in a habit could change our life so much that our days went from rushed and anxiety-ridden to calm and rewarding? It seems absurd that small things can have huge impacts.
But I’m converted to believing it is exactly the small things that can initiate the greatest change, like fault lines in a massive landscape. One tiny daily item that is intended to relieve stress and manage time, but that I believe is actuality robbing me of productivity, and joy, is classic To Do List. I have concluded recently that the To Do List is a source of stress, not the calming organizational tool I always thought it to be. I used to believe that by writing everything down I was creating a sense of control over what often felt like an overwhelming situation, when you have what feels like mountains of tasks that you need to remember and execute.
As I get older, I am also gripped by this fear that if I don’t write it down I will forget it altogether, which is not untrue, but I’m realizing that this catastrophizing is turning my little time management calming tool into a debilitating obstacle. Writing it all down does give me a momentary feeling of relief, like I found something that had been missing, and safeguarding the information in my head from getting lost forever.
My thinking is that if I forget these tasks, and therefore don’t get them done, my world will spin out of control. The type A personalities hearing this are probably relating with slight feelings of anxiety (chuckle). The truth is I never get to the bottom of my 20 plus To Do items, which gives me this unsettling feeling all day long, like my day is slipping by without the expected level of productivity that my To Do List has planted in my mind.
The mild anxiety caused by this leads to feelings of frustration, panic, failure, and lowers my productivity in the end. In other words, it’s not working. By simply failing, I have discovered that my world does not, in fact, spin out of control when I forget to write down or execute many of these hyped-up tasks. I have forgotten so many times that I’ve come to realize the important ones you can’t really escape from. Even if you forget them in the moment - they will find you, and the trivial ones aren’t as important as you think.
So, I started musing on this fact and decided to try an experiment. I began creating a To Done List, instead of a To Do List, writing down all the things I’ve completed. I noticed an instant change. I was happy, even fulfilled, looking at my list. I was seeing my accomplishments, not my burdens and failures. I had turned the tables on what had become a nemesis.
The whole thing got me thinking. What other things in life am I doing backwards? Thinking of my weaknesses in sport, gaps in my training, disappointing results instead of my strengths, accomplishments and the pure joy I feel playing swim, bike and run … being grateful for the work I have put in over the years to have a body at 50 that is healthy and strong enough to train and race all over the globe.
I started thinking in terms of small joys and small wins instead of the things I lacked. I also saw clearly how so many of the tasks on my To Do List were just not that important, and that if I naturally remembered three or four of them, versus the 20 I had listed, my day was more peaceful and enjoyable and I was still knocking it out the park, in general.
I was calmer, felt better about myself and my day, interacted more positively with others and started enjoying the “non-doing” moments spending time enjoying a coffee and having a chat with family members. Nobody noticed I didn’t get 15 things done on the now-defunct To Do List. Nothing registered for them at all.
Turns out my To Do List was just my own dirty little secret. All anyone else noticed was how pleasant, happy and generous with my time I had become. What if we applied this reframing to other areas of our life, making small changes in our habits, manifesting big shifts in our thinking and our experience. I take more time to enjoy the little things now, and somehow it hasn’t left me with less time to get my tasks and training in. I just do it all with a better, more peaceful frame of mind. I feel settled.
It’s a small thing, the To Done List, but I firmly believe its exactly the small things – the little shifts we make in our habits, and our thinking, attitude, behaviour, and choices, that have the biggest impact on our lives and the happiness we create for ourselves and spread to others. What is a source of negativity in your life that you could turn into a positive?
Even if it has nothing to do with sport it will have a ripple effect. It’s an itty bitty little question… but it could manifest big changes and bring less anxiety, more peace, some reward, less time on over-hyped tasks and more time for play and sharing moments with people we love the most.