3 Steps to Tackle Endless Task Lists: From ‘To Do’ to DONE

How’s that ‘To Do’ List working for you? If you are like me: The List was a monster that seemed to only grow! It felt like no matter what I accomplished, the ‘To Do’ List didn’t seem any shorter. At the end of each work day I would feel defeated and frustrated without a sense of accomplishment. After years of swimming upstream against endless task lists and fruitlessly attempting reminders in my calendar or tasks in Outlook to manage the tsunami of ‘To Do’ … I finally found out how to go from ‘To Do’ to DONE and tackle endless task lists.

“There’s just not enough time in the day”

You cannot beg, borrow, steal or make more time. But, there never seemed to be enough time to do everything I needed to do! To make matters worse; I would go home to see my personal ‘To Do’ List waiting for me like an evil refrigerator-magnet gremlin: cackling in glee to see my shame that I still hadn’t completed items. The Lists were growing longer and were becoming repeating nightmares in my daily life!

One day I just stopped.

I stopped the List Disease from taking over my life and my happiness. I finally realized (it only took 38 years) that no one could be expected to complete all of their ‘To Do’ items at any one time. Nor were all of the items critical right now. I must Prioritize and Eliminate: a ruthless methodology to tackle endless task list destruction.

The Problem With ‘To Do’ Lists.

Having a list is not a bad thing by itself. In actuality, it is much more burdensome (and unrealistic) to try and remember everything you need to do. Our brains only have so much capacity in short-term memory that is easily recalled. When new data comes in, something has to give and go into long-term storage. Problem is: long-term memory takes a bit more effort to retrieve. Many people feel overwhelmed and stressed because they attempt to hold TOO MUCH in short term memory. They try to juggle tasks between short-term and long-term memory resulting in constant mental shuffling.

Face it, you can’t remember everything. Keep notes in your favorite format. For some it’s a written format while others prefer digital. Regardless of how you catalog your tasks: no more ‘To Do’ Lists, no more bulk processing of information, and no more repetitive guilt trips. The words ‘To Do’ is future tense, not present tense wording. ‘To Do’ implies that it is something that will be done at some undefined time in the future. It’s too easy for our ever-evolving life to get in the way and repeatedly postpone something that doesn’t have a deadline.

#1: Prioritize

Speaking of deadlines: I prioritized my list by adding dates. The dreaded long list became an actionable document. Not a document designed to simply to keep me busy: we can be busy without accomplishing anything at all. This is now an Action Document creates a bias for outcomes! A huge step in the right direction instead of having no results, excuses, and a story to explain why we didn’t do something.

While these changes were a great start in the right direction – there was a gap to fill so I could go from Aggravated to Accomplished. After all, there are still a lot of things to get done! A long list of any sort will be intimidating and I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t just tricked my mind into another way to absorb yet another endless task list.

#2 Minimize

After some consideration and actual data I realized that I averaged 3.43 significant items complete in one day.

When I say “significant” I mean items that have weight, importance, and typically time-sensitive. Interestingly, we tend to find it more challenging to complete items depending on the level of significance. We can take longer to finalize the things that are more significant. Significance has weight to it due to fear of failure. Significance can bog you down: so beware of over-thinking tasks by adding your own fear-based assumptions and unrealistic expectations.

For example: making a phone call to someone you dread talking to can be perceptively harder to tackle than calling someone we enjoy chatting to.

With my previous revelation of only actually accomplishing about 3 significant items per day: I created NOW items that only consisted of what could fit on a single 2×2″ post-it note. These are items that I will make actionable TODAY. These items are determined by the Action Document with associated deadlines. I usually only selected two from the Action Document to leave room for unplanned significant items. If nothing unplanned occurs, then I can typically pull an item to the NOW post-it note. Just think: if we accomplish three items from our Action Document then we are automatically a winner!

#3 Freedom!

I went from feeling like Frequent Failure to Freedom! Freedom of guilt, frustration, and potential despair. This simple system has worked for years and is also successful with those that I coach. While it may feel like a superficial change, you will be surprised at how effective it is! The basis lies in our perception. There will always be tasks that need to be completed. As we push ourselves to do more we feel like the days become shorter and our lists become longer. But there is a method to resolve the madness!

Your Action Plan

The amount of items you can accomplish in a day will vary depending on how much energy you need to invest to get each item done. Try tracking yourself for about two weeks and see how many action items you accomplish per day and create your own Action Plan to end the Aggravation! We needn’t feel like we are swimming in quicksand. A little self-transparency, hard-nosed realism, and setting correct expectations of ourselves can go a long way to a happier you!

I hope you found this article useful to tackle endless task lists and your daily stress.