- I read this the other day, and it just summed up exactly how I've
used a to-do list in the past and how it never worked. See if this
sounds like you too. "Waking up, getting ready for work, and surveying
your to-do list sounds ideal, right? Well, it's not. Often when people do this, they bypass important or
complicated tasks in favor of what's easier to do or more urgent.
So, what happens next? Well, by ignoring complex tasks, you're ultimately setting yourself
up for failure and disappointment -- and what's worse, you're
destroying your self-image." Yes, I think so many of us can relate to this. "It's reinforcing the self-image
of someone who doesn't
do what they say they're going to do -- and that's horrible. We know that behavior change requires
identity change and so when you reinforce this bad identity -- as someone who doesn't do what
they say they are going to do -- you're reinforcing the
wrong identity. Essentially, this means you get caught up in a
vicious cycle of not doing what you're supposed to do," "Supposed to do,"
"And then feeling bad about it." Doesn't this just so accurately sum
up our experience with to-do lists? And so today let's talk about how we're
using to-do lists all wrong and how we can actually set ourselves up for success
so we can have the identity of someone who gets stuff done and feels really
good about it at the end of the day. Well, hi, I'm Dawn from The Minimal
Mom. If we haven't met before, I'm married to Tom and we have four
kids ages six through 11. And it's fall. We're actually starting homeschooling
today. It's our second year. It's... Anyways, I've said I'm not qualified
to talk about homeschooling yet, but I do love talking about productivity
and time management and to-do lists because there are a few small changes
that I made a handful of years ago that have completely transformed
how I use and make to-do lists. But more importantly, how productive I am, even on days when I don't
feel like it, when I'm tired, I don't want to do anything. It
still works on those days too. And this is part of our Mega
Motivation collaboration for September. So that means there are 20 other friends
sharing their top time management tips as well. I'll put that
playlist link down below. And so let's talk about why our to-do
lists aren't working. And so, like I said, if there's more than seven things,
our brain just kind of shuts down. And we've all experienced that. And so
we need to make shorter to-do lists. What's the magic number? Three. Almost every time management
person that I've listened to, from Mel Robbins to Michael
Hyatt, to even Joshua Becker, says have no more than
three things, three things, on your to-do list on any given day. And what's great about the number three
is that if I wake up in the morning, I didn't sleep well last night,
I don't have a lot of energy, usually three items still doesn't feel
overwhelming or overly intimidating to me. But most of us have way more than
three on our list of things to do, right? So how do I choose those three? Well, that's where it comes down
to prioritizing. So again, looking at my list and saying, whoa, everything on there is not
equal in importance to my life. And so I've talked before
about the book, Eat That Frog. I've referenced frog projects
and sometimes people are like, what are you talking about? And
so in the book, Eat That Frog, the author talks about how, if you had on your task list
or your to-do list for today, that you had to eat a frog, you would want to do that first thing
in the morning so that it's not hanging over your head all day. And so, as we look at our to-do list, we need to be able to pull out
and prioritize those things that have the likelihood to hang over our head. That cause us stress
when they're incomplete. That have bearing on our
financial well-being, on other important aspects. Like
if I don't order groceries today, the kids might grumble because they
don't have cereal in the morning. But if I don't get my taxes to
the accountant by the deadline, there's financial ramifications, I
might be more likely to get audited. I don't know, I'm just... But
they're not at all equal, right? But if I write them on a list, they look like they're equal in the
impact that they have on my life, but they're nowhere near the same. And so we need to be able to
prioritize the things on our list. And I saw this quote on Instagram the
other day, and I thought it was so good. It said, "I think we underestimate how amazing
it feels to get things done." And that's what I love about using this highly
simplified to-do list where we're just focusing on three things. When we can get these three things
done right away in the morning, it really changes not
only how we see ourselves, but how we approach the rest of the day
and the momentum and the energy that we have towards it. Okay, so we've pulled out our
three high priority items. What do we do with the rest of the
things that need to be on our list so we don't forget? And that's where I propose
having a separate brain dump section, like a master to-do list that's
broken down by the different roles that we play. So I actually made a free printable
of this just for you to see. You could print it out and use it,
or you can take any planner, really, and use it this way. So what I've
done is for each day of the week, there's spots for my three items. No
more than three items on my task list. But then on separate pages, I have the brain dump section
or our master to-do list. And falling in line
with the Franklin Covey, and I think Michael Hyatt
talks about this too, but we want to break up our brain dump
into the different roles that we play or the different hats that we wear. They talk about the different hats, like what are the different
characters I play throughout the day. There's household things,
if I work or volunteer, maybe things for my kids. So the brain dump sheets are divided
up into different sections so you can categorize as you're
dumping. Because again, we still don't want these lists
to necessarily get too long. So by breaking them up
into different categories, it helps to keep them a
little bit shorter, again, just so we're not overwhelming out brain. But for any of us that
start to feel anxious, that just feel like we have so much going
on in our mind and we need to find a way to get it out, you probably already know that brain
dumping is a great tactic for that. And it helps us to feel then like,
I'm not going to forget anything. So what you'll see here on
this printable, and again, you can use any planner like this, is I have the spots at the very top
to put your three tasks for the day. And then the rest of this
area, it's kind of like, you can use it kinda like a bullet
journal where you can rough out your day, what's going on, jot notes, other
appointments, anything like that. And then down at the bottom,
I have thinking ahead. So the things I hope to accomplish
this week, I'll put down here, but otherwise the rest of it all
goes on these brain dump sheets. And the color wasn't working on our
printer, so it's not quite as pretty. And so then what I do when I go to
plan out my day, so it's morning, I have my cup of coffee, I'm going
to decide my three things for today, then I can reference those brain
dump sheets and be like, okay, what is the most important things that
I need to get done today and pull them in. The other thing that's great about
the brain dump is that if I get my three things done, then I can look at those
brain dump sheets and say, okay, what else could I get done? And what
I found for myself, like I said, I really try to do my frog projects
or those less savory tasks, first thing in the morning. And
then by afternoon, I'm like, okay, let's order groceries, let's
process the Amazon return. So then I do the things that
make a smaller impact on life, but still need to get done.
They're still important. And then I can check off some of those
things throughout the day as well. But, okay, so I know many of us are like,
this sounds great, but honestly, the thought of getting up and first
thing in the morning tackling the hardest things, feels kind of daunting. Like a
lot of us have this idea, like, well, I like to do easy things
on my task list first, it kind of warms me up for the
day, right? The problem is, is often we do the easy stuff and
we never get to the hard stuff. So that's where if we
can make this switch, it can drastically improve
our quality of life. And like we talked about at the beginning,
how we feel about ourselves. But, okay, so that's hard though. And so one tactic to make eating these
frogs first thing in the morning a little bit easier is to also write down how
much time we expect that it's going to take. So a few years ago when we were
still selling real estate full-time, Tom and I were out, I don't even
remember what we were doing. We were out and about and we got a phone
call from the gentleman that we worked closely with, and he was like,
"Hey, I just got a phone call. There's this property and the gal really
wants to find out what it's worth so that she can get it listed.
They're kind of in a hurry. Could you stop in and visit with her?"
And we were only like 10 minutes away so we're like, oh yeah, we'll just
swing in and visit with her. We'll get the details and send it
back to him and he can go on about it, whatever. So we get down there, we
visited with her, we get all the details. I call him like, "Hey, we
got the info." And he's like, "Would you have time to run the CMA
(the competitive market analysis), like just run the report so she can see
compared to other things that have sold what it's worth." I mean, if
you're selling your house, you want to see other properties that
had sold. And I was like, "Yep, sure, I can do that." And so this was a Friday
afternoon and I texted the gal and said, "Yep, I'll have it for you beginning
of next week." And so what did I do? I put it on my to-do list. So then
it's Monday morning and I'm like, oh, I need to do that CMA for Rachel so I
can get it down to her. The problem was, as I remembered, I'm like, ah, it
was an acreage, it was like 51 acres, which isn't like a standard acreage. And
then it was also a manufactured home. And so it just made it a little bit more
complicated because then you need to make adjustments. And so those couple things made it
just hard enough that I was like, I'll do it later. Okay, I'm going
to take care of these other things. It's going to require a little more
brain energy. I'll do it later. And then it's Wednesday. And I'm like,
I told her beginning of the week, this is like up against where
beginning, and then I'm like, I just don't have time today. And so I kept pushing it off and now
it's Friday afternoon and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm going to look like
such a loser if I do not get this to her. And then something else came up,
she emailed and was like, "Oh, hey, I was expecting to hear back." And then you feel that dread when you
see her name pop in your email inbox. And you're like, ugh, and so I'm
like send a quick email. I'm like, "I'm just headed out the door now, but I will finish it up when I get back
home." And so now it's hanging over my head into the following weekend. So seven, nine days I had been putting this off. And when I finally sat down
on Sunday afternoon to do it, do you know how long it
took? 30 minutes. 30 minutes. And so I put this task off all
week, had it hanging over my head, every time my email
popped up, I'm like, oh, that's going to be Rachel wondering
where her CMA is. And so for a full week, it hung over my head. It
caused me stress and anxiety. And it took 30 minutes once I
actually sat down and did it. And so that has always stuck with me.
Even this morning I asked Tom, I'm like, "Hey, did you follow up
with our accountant about
that thing?" And he's like, "No, I need to email
her." And then he finally, I kind of cornered him at the
table with his computer. I'm like, "Will you please send that email?"
How long did that email take to send? Three minutes? And he had been
putting it off for multiple days, had been hanging over his head. And so I love this tactic of assigning
how long you think it's going to take to the task because often that helps us to
keep it into perspective how long it's going to actually take, how much of our precious energy
it's actually going to take. One other tactic that I think is so good,
and they talk about this in the book, Eat That Frog, is to imagine how good
it's going to feel to have it done. Even if that Monday morning
when I was putting off that CMA, if I would've thought, I don't want to do this because I
feel like it's going to be difficult. It's not going to be straightforward.
If I would've just thought to myself, but you know what? If I had this done by lunchtime
or even my morning coffee break, when I make my second cup
of coffee for the day, it would feel so good to just have it
sent off to her and not hanging over my head anymore. And I feel like if
I could have imagined that too, it would have propelled me through the
uncomfortableness of actually doing it. And so I would love to know, are
there any tasks as we talk about this, are there any tasks that have been
hanging over your head that you could complete in an hour or
less? I know sometimes too, emails can be a big thing that,
oh, I didn't respond right away. And now I feel so rude that I haven't
responded or a phone call that needs to get returned. I know we all, none of
us like making phone calls anymore. I hear that one so often, oh, it's
this phone call I need to make. But a while back, Tom and I went to a real estate seminar
thing to help you sell more real estate. And the gal was talking about how,
if you're in any kind of sales, you have to be in constant contact with
the people around you and work your network basically. And so
one of the exercises like, write down everybody you know. And she
said, "I know what you're thinking. There's people on that list that you
could not just call right now to see if they have any interest in doing
something real estate-related with you, because you forgot to call them
back. You missed an important day. You never emailed them back." And
so what she said was she said, "Just acknowledge it. Call them or
email them and say, you know what? I feel like a really big loser. You had called me six months ago
and I never returned your call. And I've been thinking about that since. And I'm so sorry that I did
that." And we'll just call it out. Maybe it's an email you haven't sent
in a timely manner and just say, "You know what, I am so sorry, it was so rude of me that
I never got back to you. And I just wanted to let you know that
I'm really sorry that that happened." And so often by just acknowledging that,
then we can get it off of our list, have it not hanging over our head anymore.
And I think that's the biggest thing, is that these things that we don't do, not only does it deteriorate how we think
about ourselves and make us feel bad about ourselves. And again, reinforce this identity that we're
someone who doesn't do what we say we're going to do. I feel like it deteriorates our quality
of life to constantly have these things hanging over our head that we
need to do, that we should do, that why didn't I do that? So by learning to make these
really short to-do lists, by prioritizing the items that have to
get done, that make the biggest impact, it is amazing how it rebuilds our
confidence in ourselves and it energizes ourselves. And then one other thing you'll notice
with this little printable that I made is that I actually have a
separate habit tracker. So if we want to start a new habit, sometimes it kind of gets
lost in our to-do list. But I think having a separate sheet where
we can keep track of how many days in a row we do it, is much more effective. Like it's really helpful to see our
progress. And I need to mention too, our Take Your House Back course is open. And what I've found is that as I've
reduced the inventory in our house, as we've decluttered and gotten rid of
stuff, all of this, the time management, the prioritizing, my to-do list,
everything has gotten so much easier. And what made me think of it was Cas in
one of our recent Facebook lives where we just answer questions and we talk about
things that are working, not working, she mentioned that if we want to start
the habit of doing the dishes every day, which Dana all about and she swears by, but sometimes depending on
what kind of season we're in, that feels a little daunting.
And so Cas said, instead, just make the habit of running a
sink full of dishwater every day. You don't have to do the dishes.
All you have to do is run the water. And I thought that was so good.
And we all know this, right? If we take bigger tasks and we break
them down, that it becomes more doable. And so if you need any help
getting your house under control, if you need any
accountability, extra support, we would love to provide that for you. We're doing an All Day Declutter
coming up on Saturday, September 18th. It'd be really fun if you could join in. Replay is available if you
can't join us live on that day. But the testimonies coming out were
so good. And everyone just said like, there was just like this
energy about the day. And there was so much progress made, people that had felt like they had no
motivation for decluttering got motivated and it carried into the weeks following
too. So it was kind of magical. So I'm going to put the
details for that down below. And so I wanted to answer just a couple
of questions that I've gotten recently about time management. So here's
a question from Alyssa. She said, "I hear so much about block scheduling
& I feel like, especially as a mom, that this is something that
I 'should' be doing. However, I haven't been able to
get it to work for me, our days are often unpredictable." And
so I love this question because for a while I was beating myself up that I
couldn't make block scheduling work for me either. And so I think there are
people that it works so well for, and it just lines up with how they're
wired and the stage that their family is in and different things. For
me, I never got it to work well. I just felt like as soon as I was like,
okay, I'm on track with my blocks, and then it was like, the school
nurse would call and be like, "Can you come pick Maggie up from
school?" Or like my grocery delivery would come without the one thing that
I really needed to make supper. And then I'm running to
the store and it's all off. And so I think it's so important to
just figure out what works for us. And I think especially if blocks
scheduling hasn't worked for you, trying this out, making the really short to-do list
and then having a separate brain dump, it might be worth a try to see if
that works for you. Beth asked, "Do you have a favorite
planner that you use?" No. I feel like it's more about the principle
of having a short to-do list and prioritizing, than
about any given planner. And so what I love about this system
we're talking about today is you can make any planner work for it.
You can get a generic one, you could do it in a notebook and just
write out your top three things for the day. And so in the printable I made, I have this box for the top three
and then I just made the rest, I like to kind of jot out how the day's
going to flow if I have any appointments or other things. So there's just kind of a grid on
it where you can write out notes, you can make out blocks or anything for
how it's helpful for you to plan out what your day looks like. But
again, there's no magic planner. It's just being able to find a system
that works for us that we can stick with. And it's okay if we've tried stuff in
the past or even spent a lot of money on planners that haven't worked. It's okay. But do keep trying to figure out a system
that works for you because it's too important to give up on. Alright, well, I think that's everything I wanted to say. I'll put a link to those free
printables down below, but again, you don't need them. If it's helpful,
I'm really glad for that. But again, I think we can make any
planner function like this. And if you have any top tips,
will you leave those down below? Because it's always so fun to read the
comments and see other people's ideas as well. Alright, I love you. I hope you have a great day
and I'll see you again soon.
