Delete Half Your To-Do List. Thank Me Later.

There’s no need for extra motivation. You just need to have a shorter list.

Photo by Lau Clrd on Unsplash

Would you like to know what my to-do list looked like some six months ago?

· Reply to emails.

· Clean the kitchen.

· Work on the blog.

· Do research on that thing I missed doing research on.

· Call back the person I’ve avoided calling back for 3 weeks.

· Exercise

· Drink more water

· Read a few pages of a book

· Plan meals.

· Do laundry after 5 days of laundry being left on the chair.

And that was just before lunch.

Each morning I would make this very long list and then I felt briefly organised, and then the rest of the day would pass and I would feel like I was a failure at doing this huge list. Marking off two things. Taking the remainder of the fourteen with them for the next day. Adding more. It was never reduced in size. It just… evolved.

I still kept doing and thinking that it was my problem and always reminding myself myself taht that I needed to have more discipline, better habits, a different routine, a different app, a colour coded system.

It wasn’t my fault. It’s the list that’s the problem.

Why We Make Lists That We Can’t Finish:

Here’s my guess. We take a pen to the table and write something down, but never intend to actually do it.

Anything and everything is on the list because it feels like doing something if the item is on the list. It calms the inner voice that’s telling you that you are going to forget. Then there are 27 things you need to do and all of them seem equally important, and you don’t know what to do first, so you don’t. Or you begin 5 activities and complete none of them.

Sound familiar?

Don’t have an enormous to-do list that isn’t your best friend in productivity. It makes you feel more stressed. There is actual research on this; I’m not sure our brains can hold and prioritize that many open loops. We just freeze.

What I did instead:

I set a rule for myself. Three things for a day. That’s it.

Each morning I select three things that are really important on that day. Not four categories, with fourteen sub tasks underneath them. Not 14 sub-tasks in 3 categories. Three real, specific & feasible tasks to do.

All the other things end up on another list, which I have called a someday list. It exists. I can see it. It is not the problem of today, however.

Then, when I have three things done, then I either stop, or I take one more thing off the someday list. Optional. It’s not your fault — either one way or the other.

The first week was not a good week. Well I was being lazy. Just like I was letting the time go.

But in actual that week I did more than all the previous weeks of the month combined.

How to implement it in practice:

STEP 1: Make a list of all your thoughts. Everything. Get it all out.

STEP2: Review that list and imagine that you get to do three things today, what would these things actually move your life forward? Not what is urgent! Don’t do what someone else wants from you. That’s actually the whole point.

STEP 3: Those three things, that’s your today’s to do list. The rest can wait.

That’s it. No app required. No colour coding. There is NO waking call at 5am.

The One thing that nobody tells you aboutt Doing Less:

You eventually stop dreading it when you cut short your to-do list.

That 3am dread of waking up already two steps behind before the day has begun was always there to take a frustrating start. That’s not your problem. That’s a list problem. You created a day that was never going to happen and then beat yourself up for not working harder.

Always better to do three things well than seven poorly. And getting through your list — the actual process of completing it and putting the pen down, finally having closure on the day — releases something in your brain that no productivity hack ever will.

It tells you that you are a doer. And that feeling compounds. You go into tomorrow with motivation, not shame. You cease from feeling perpetually behind. You learn to trust yourself again. You don’t need a new system. You don’t need more motivation. You are training on data until October, 2023 You do not need to rise earlier or work harder or somehow squeeze more out of a day that is already strained.

You just need a shorter list.

Open your notes app right now. Write three things. Just three.

Delete the rest. You’ll thank yourself later.

Save this for when your to-do list has you spiralling. And send it to whoever needs to hear it — go on, you know who they are.

Best Regards

Sana Umar