List, not Lists

Think about all the places in your life that generate actions to take. Email inboxes, Slack, Messages, Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram Messages, the good ol’ IRL conversation, and of course, your brain. Activity from each place leads to open tabs on browsers (mobile and laptop, Safari and Chrome), Instagram saved posts, Facebook saved posts, and more emails, messages, and conversations. 

They all generate things to look into, follow up on, or do.  

Before coaching, I tracked them all using iPhone Reminders and Notes, Outlook tasks, scraps of paper, lists in notebooks, email drafts, Word docs, and my personal favorite: the spreadsheet. Basically, whatever was easiest for wherever I was active in.

While I felt organized, I wasn’t effective. It was easy to forget about things left undone here and there, and there were whole lists I forgot about completely.

I also wasn’t efficient: I spent a lot of time looking for what task was on which list: was it an Outlook draft email or a Gmail draft email that has my notes from the article on carbon taxes? Was it a Google Sheet or an Excel sheet with the list of ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner? 

This inefficiency was a drain on my energy and the ineffectiveness wasn’t doing anybody good. 

I want to make my life easy. That’s why I limit my to-do list to only one place now. 

If you want to make your life easy, pick one place to keep your to-do list. I use Omnifocus, but I encourage you to use whatever works best for you. 

Then think of all the other to-do lists you might have floating around, and find them. 

Next, combine and condense them al into this one to-do list. 

This can be an informative exercise, showing you what you’ve already accomplished, what you no longer want to do, and what you’re super excited about doing the moment you see it.

It may make sense to have separate to-do lists for work and personal life, or maybe one for family and one for you. That’s ok, just stick to that system, whatever works for you.

Now you have less to-do lists! How efficient! Now review your to dos and ask:

How many of these things are reflected in or build toward the ideal day in your life? Move those to the top!

How many things aren’t on there that you want to be? Add them!

How many are things that you think you should do, verses things you actually want to do? Cross the should-dos off the list. If that is too painful to do, schedule a call with me and we’ll walk through them together!