From feeling under pressure to joyful - a new way to handle To-do list

As a "planning freak", like what my friends often call me, I over the years developed a quite useful and efficient system to bring my long- and short-term goals down to monthly plans and then to daily To-do lists. However, like many people, I always felt pressure when I look at a long list every day. A few events happened recently helped me to break away from this, at the same time improve my productivity.

Before, I maintained long To-do lists with all the small tasks. The rationale was so that I could feel accomplishing when I could cross even one item from my list. However, in reality I didn't feel that good when I checked off a task. On the contrary, I was immediately overwhemed by the number of items left to be done on the day. My attention then was mainly on the lengthy list I had left. Splitting the tasks into different contexts (home, work, etc.) didn't help a lot. Neither dividing into morning/afternoon/evening didn't help. Anyhow, I always had overachieved my long- and short-term plans though rarely finished the things I had planned for a day. The process was efficient but not fun. Rigor was what I needed to carry on everyday. Does that sound familiar to you?

After going through a series of dramatic events in my family, I realized that I need to learn how to enjoy what I am doing, rather than just the future results. A couple of posts from Leo of ZenHabbit blog also helped me a lot. I set out to change my habits and also my To-do list.

For more than a month now, my To-do list has only sufficient details as I combine some small items back. I update my To-do list at the end of the day. I wake up early and during my exercise pick three Most Important Tasks (MITs) of the day. The MITs is now my To-do list and I treat my traditional To-do becomes a note. I try to accomplish as many of these MITs as possible in the morning. I also build some of the items in the list into my daily routines, making them as natural as teeth cleaning when I go to bed or when I wake up.

Since now I have only 3 "tasks" that I must do in the day, crossing each becomes really an achievement. After these 3, I feel I have successfully done with my daily tasks. Since at least 2 of the 3 MITs bring me closer to my goals, I can focus on the task rather than worry about my old lengthy list of things to be done. Finishing the MITs in the early morning help me to create a positive feeling. Meanwhile, I treat any additional thing I do in my list beyond the MITs as one extra step I make rather than one less thing to do.This helps me to carry on the positive feeling  throughout the day.

After a month, I realized that I accomplished much more while feel very good about myself. After all, I can really enjoy things I do, things around me while still moving toward my goals.

Upload in Walldorf, Germany.

Comments

This morning, I found a good methodology related to Time Management called Getting Things Done (GTD).

One of its important rule is "whatever you can do in 2 minutes, do it immediately". yeah, along with your recommend MITs rule, "2-minutes" will be my first rules to keeping my life organized and simple :)

I also posted the diagram of "2-minutes" rule in here: http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k129/ngocgl/GTD_principle.jpg

[Tien Nguyen]

Thanks for the comment.

I partially agree with this. If I scan through my emails, I will have to spend more than 10 x 2 minutes to answer them. I normally flag mails and process them in a burst. If it's an individual task that I can do in 2 minutes.

This however was not my problem of feeling under pressure before since I only included in the list anything that required more than 15 minutes.

Tien.