The To Do List Nightmare: The Fatal Assumption that Programs Frustration into Every Day

By Andrew Leigh

To Do Lists are great way of getting the most out of your day. But using them wrongly can be a real nightmare – the result of a fatal assumption about our daily work that can lead to a recurring sense of failure. Here are 4 steps to put it right.

Whether at home or at work, the To Do List is a great way of getting the most out of your day. But using it wrongly can send your blood pressure off the scale and give you a recurring sense of failure – even on the best of days.

Sounds crazy doesn’t it? You’ve worked non-stop for 8 hours, 10 hours or more. You’ve ploughed through emails, developed projects, liaised with clients, staff, managers, attended meetings, delivered presentations. By any measure it should have been a fantastic day.

But then you look again at your To Do List and feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction and frustration. Just look at all the stuff you didn’t do! And how can so much activity result in so few items ticked off the list?

The standard explanation is that you are getting sidetracked by those easy but unimportant jobs that can be so ‘helpful’ in avoiding the stuff that really counts. This is something that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s definitely worth doing an audit on the value of the jobs you choose to do or feel forced to do.

Fatal assumption

That’s fine – except that we almost always make one fatal assumption. In our desperate search for increased effectiveness, we assume that all we are looking for is work that we are overvaluing. As a result we often undervalue work that is actually of very real value. Typically, these are activities that don’t have a clear outcome or endpoint – or which are difficult to schedule.

Warning!

Let’s be very clear about this. Undervaluing vital parts of your daily work sets you up for the To Do List Nightmare.

Here’s an example of how this might happen:

1. Undervalue (for instance) unscheduled interactions

2. Make no allowances for them on your To Do List

3. Begin to resent and be stressed by this part of your work

4. As your day progresses, feel the ‘weight’ of your unachieved To Do items

5. Stay late to complete as much as possible

6. Begin each day expecting to fail – end it knowing you have.

Recognise the pattern? Here’s my 4-step route to sorting it out.

1 - Reassess your activities.

This is absolutely vital. Yes, you do need to recognise the work you shouldn’t be doing, but you also must fully value the work that deserves it.

Question to ask: What would happen if I gave this activity less attention?

If the answer is nothing, then give it less attention. But answering this question honestly will often uncover the real benefits to yourself, your colleagues and your organisation.

2 - Break the Unrealistic Expectations habit.

Your To Do List is not a wish list. It is not a this-is-what-I’d-do-if-the-day-were-48-hours-long list either. Make allowances for all your daily activities and be sensible about how much it’s possible to do.

3 -    Make an Achieved List.

If you want to understand how much you are really doing each day, try compiling an Achieved List for a week. Make sure that everything goes on it – especially the small jobs. As well as helping pinpoint work you should do less of it will allow you to appreciate all the great stuff you’ve done that didn’t fit easily on your To Do List. Prepare to be amazed!

4 -    At the end of each day, focus on your achievements.

Now, instead of beating yourself up over what you didn’t do, give yourself some long overdue credit for what you did do.

Use this method and see the benefits. Pressure of work may tempt you to go back to your old To Do List nightmare. But the odds are that you’ll actually achieve more each day by putting less on your list.

Most importantly you will be programming success into day rather than failure. And that will feel very good indeed.

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Andrew Leigh helps people achieve fulfilling life direction and personal wellbeing, as well as working with established or aspiring artists and writers wishing to attain new levels of achievement.

You can find a free self-coaching download, coaching tools and articles at his website http://www.pathwayscoaching.co.uk - or check out the fantastic one-to-one client results on his testimonial page http://www.pathwayscoaching.co.uk/testimonials

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Leigh

Comments

[Mark Lee]

A related tip that can be very useful is to have a NOT TO DO list. Identify some of things you will resist doing the next day. Tick them off each time you resist the temptation to do them.

Also, if you find the constant arrival of fresh emails is a distraction you can always reset your email handler (eg: Outlook) to only check for new emails once an hour - or even less frequently.