Cru’s Letter

When you tell yourself to do something and you do it, your subconscious makes note of self-respect. When you don’t do it, the opposite occurs.

A lot of people use to-do lists but the way they go about using them is more of a formula for disappointment than a way of actually getting things done. The reason is that it feels good to make a massive list of things to get done but it doesn’t feel that good to actually do it (perhaps until you get some momentum).

I want to share with you my extremely simple approach to to-do lists but first, I’ll outline my thinking with how I helped a past client, Kevin, overcome a to-do/resolution list overload.

It was some time last December and Kevin was swamped with responsibility as a marketing agency owner. He was big on setting goals for the new year so we started by doing a review of his goals from the year before…

There were A LOT.

I asked him a simple question. “What percentage of the goals did you hit?”

“20%” he replied.

My advice for making the new year’s goals more aligned and completable started with something very simple… The list should be 80% shorter than last year.

Put bluntly, if you know something won’t get done, why even put it on the list?

When setting expectations, it’s so important that you set ones you can actually meet because otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure.

For example, if you know you can only complete 8 tasks one day but you have 36 items on a to-do list, you’d just be fabricating unnecessary disappointment.

My approach:

Make your to-do list for a given day on that day, not a week ahead of time. In the morning, write down the things that you know need to be done off the top of your head. Things that you easily remember are probably the most pertinent.

Then, when you have the basics and you look through your mental filing cabinet for the things you might be forgetting, ask yourself, “can I get this done today and if so, when will I do it?” The idea isn’t to write down everything you wish was done, it’s to write down what you’re choosing to complete that day.

Of course not every to-do list will be completed perfectly because life kinda happens all the time but simplifying your approach to expectation setting and meeting should lower that to-do list default rate.

-Cru

P.S. Check out my recent Q&A podcast episode: