I want to tell you a fictional story about John and why he is sometimes robbed of the pleasure of moving to-dos to done. There is a little-known reason for this feeling of being overwhelmed and immobilized.
John understands the importance of having an external dedicated spot to park ideas and tasks. With admirable effort, he is now in the habit of parking those tasks, projects, and ideas into one trusted place. He started with a planner that his friend loved using. It was a vast improvement on his previous scraps of paper sprinkled around his home. After some time, though, he grew tired of erasing and re-writing as his priorities shifted throughout the week. He wanted a faster way to prioritize and reprioritize tasks at a moment’s notice. After an initial investigation, he decided that a digital app would improve his ability to keep up with his ever-changing schedule. He limited himself to two hours of research because of his proclivity to fall down the research rabbit hole. There were so many promising options, yet he was able to settle on Asana. Fast forward six months. John now transfers all his great ideas into the app, in addition to his personal and work tasks. He sorts them by importance and urgency and immediately feels a sense of control that was previously elusive. Excellent work, John! Let’s all give him a round of applause because this is a significant accomplishment. John marvels to his friend about this new habit. He is shocked that it has become second nature to plop nagging tasks into the app. They no longer nag him nor take him off task. Although he is quite pleased with his efforts, he wonders aloud why he occasionally feels slightly cagey when looking at his lists. He diligently prioritizes all tasks by importance and urgency, which is why the feeling is baffling. In talking to his friend, he discovers the root of his anxiety. Even with prioritization, there are so many competing tasks he could be doing at any given moment, and there are clearly not enough minutes in the day to tackle them all. So, what can John do to lessen this angst and increase his sense of accomplishment by the end of the day? An entire industry revolves around productivity and reaching goals, but today, I offer John two simple tactics to avoid feeling swamped. He already understands that the holy grail of productivity lies within the “important but not urgent” quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix. Ironically, though, a different quadrant (“not important and not urgent”) is throwing him off balance. He forgot to apply a critical step of the organizing process to his task and project lists. He used this step successfully when clearing out his garage but did not realize he could apply it to his task list. Namely, he still needs to purge extraneous tasks and projects. Even though he prioritized his massive to-do list, it still feels daunting. After connecting physical and informational clutter, he downsizes his lists by eliminating non-important-non urgent tasks. A familiar feeling of liberation arises as he ruthlessly deletes one task after another. He recalls feeling the same way when victoriously pulling his car into his garage. After vanquishing the obvious dead weight, a smattering of projects give him pause. He is unsure whether these projects will bring him closer to his larger goals. He recalls details of the garage project for any relevant tactics. Sure enough, he remembers putting a few items in a box labeled with a future discard date. This purgatorial box had allowed him to determine whether he would miss the items after a few months. With this strategy in mind, he parks the final projects in a separate section of the app where they no longer visually bombard him. He wants to label this section appropriately so it still catches his eye but is not intrusive. He remembers reading about the “Someday/Maybes” list in David Allen’s Getting Things Done. John wants something a bit more memorable. He labels this section with the hyperbolic title, “I’m either a genius or delusional!” It injects a bit of humor into the process. He knows it will bring some levity to the app. John is now happily tackling his tasks one day at a time. Most evenings, he feels satisfied seeing his completed tasks leading him to essential goals. The whole process feels lighter. It is a massive accomplishment. He shares the good news with his friend, who treats him to a celebratory dinner. Like John, I use Asana to get ideas, tasks, and projects out of my head to focus on one task. It is easier than focusing on one task while simultaneously attempting to remember other tasks. I have no affiliation with this company but have tried various apps over the years, and I find Asana to be one of the better task apps on the market. Can you imagine employing John’s tactics on your task list? Perhaps this sounds fantastic, but your task lists aimlessly wander around the home on random bits of paper. There is hope. Contact me so we can map out your game plan and make this dreamy story your reality. Whether you use a task app or a paper planner, I can attest to the liberation from deleting irrelevant tasks and ideas from your lists. Have you ever felt relief in letting go of mistake purchases? Relive that moment by deleting ideas that once seemed brilliant but have lost their luster. When in doubt, use the Someday/Maybe list. You can relax, trusting your system to hold on to that idea until you have time to revisit it. Try these tactics to move away from a to-do list and towards a to-do-to-done list.
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