Why You’re Not Getting Your To-Do List Done
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 reasons you may not be getting your to-do list done
⋒ 5 ~peaceful~ productivity strategies you can implement instead
⋒ Examples of what this looks like in my life to help you get the wheels turning
A few weeks ago, a BFF member made a post that inspired this blog post and podcast episode this week:
”Ladies I need help. I put everything and everyone ahead of myself. I really want to launch a business and begin sharing more health and wellness online. I am all set up, I have everything I need to get started, but I always end up feeling like if the baby is sleeping, I shouldn’t be doing that, I should be cleaning, then I end up just stuck, feeling paralyzed, doing absolutely nothing because I’m trying to do a little bit of everything. It’s working out, organizing the house, launching a business. It feels like I just keep getting stuck in freeze mode. Even if I write it as my focus 3. Who has been there and how did you figure it all out??”
This is a very real thing that a lot of people experience so know that there isn’t anything wrong with you if you ever feel frozen or overwhelmed by your to-do list.
There are so many reasons why you could be feeling this way and we’re gonna talk about a few of them but as you listen, please remember: there isn’t anything wrong with you as a person. You just have to do a little bit of troubleshooting to get to the root of why you feel frozen and then do what you need to do to get un-frozen… to defrost if you will, lol.
I’ve worked with hundreds of women in my coaching courses to help them with things just like this. This is the exact type of issues we tackle inside the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course.
I’m going to give you some common reasons why, as a productivity coach, I’ve come across my students not getting their to-do lists done, and what you can do about each one.
5 Reasons You May Not Be Getting Your To-Do List Done
Reason #1: You’re using a running daily to-do list.
Raise your hand if you have one giant to-do list with every task that needs to be done for your whole life and you end up just rewriting the date every day at the top because it feels like every task just keeps rolling over to tomorrow…
No one raised their hand, right? Because we’re all using the Hustle Sanely Planning System which means we schedule and prioritize our tasks using the Weekly Top 3 and Daily Focus 3 method right??? 👀 Listen, I’m not judging you if you have one long AF to-do list because I used to do life like that, too.
And you wanna know what happened to me?
~ I felt a constant sense of overwhelm – my to-do list was always a lingering buzz in the back of my mind, keeping me from ever being truly present.
~ I went to bed every night stressed, feeling like a failure, because I didn’t get my whole list done.
~ I woke up feeling anxious before my feet hit the ground because of how many things I knew were on my to-do list.
And that daily rhythm of going to bed stressed and waking up anxious had me stuck in a cycle of burnout. I never felt productive and I always felt overwhelmed. It was awful.
So I decided that my long, running to-do list had to go because it was causing me to feel like I was drowning every day.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: Prioritize and schedule your tasks.
Now, instead of having one running to-do list that I have sitting in front of me every day, just chipping away at it haphazardly, hoping to one day get to the end, I prioritize and schedule my tasks.
Here’s how I do that:
— Every month, I have a Focus Goal, every week I have a Top 3, and every day I have a Focus 3.
— My monthly focus goal is the goal that I want to give my best time and energy to that month.
— I break down the goal into broad action steps and those become my weekly Top 3 tasks.
— I break my weekly Top 3 tasks into narrow action steps and those become my daily Focus 3 tasks. (I do more than 3 tasks a day, but I always know which 3 tasks are the MOST important ones to get done every day.)
I do still have what I call a “Catch-All Task List” that houses tasks that need to be done but I’m not sure when they’ll get done, but I only look at this catch-all task list during my Monthly Check-In Meetings and during my Weekly Prep Meetings – I’m not looking over this list every day and letting it stress me out.
All of these are part of The Hustle Sanely Planning System™ which I teach in detail in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course – and because I love you and don’t want your daunting to-do list to rule your life anymore, I’m giving you $50 off the course – use the code PEACEFULLIFE to get your butt in there!
Now I’m able to get the most important tasks from my to-do list done and I’m not constantly plagued by “oh I should be doing ________” when I’m trying to rest, read, spend time with my family, or whatever. I go to bed feeling accomplished and I wake up with a game plan.
I’m just over here living my best peacefully productive life, you know?
Reason #2: Your Focus 3 tasks are too big.
One thing that I hear from people is that they find that they’re not able to complete their Focus 3 tasks.
First, let’s back up and clarify what Focus 3 tasks even are. Your Focus 3 tasks are your 3 most important tasks of the day. The 3 tasks that you want to give your best energy to.
When you are planning your day, ask yourself, “What 3 tasks do I need to get done to feel like today was a productive day?”
If you find yourself not completing your Focus 3 tasks, it might be because your tasks are just too big. If your brain sees 3 really huge tasks on your to-do list, it’s gonna panic and freeze. Your brain likes to choose the path of least resistance so you gotta help it out by telling it exactly what to do.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: Chunk your tasks.
Aka make them smaller/more manageable.
So if I sat down and saw “Declutter house” as a Focus 3 task, I wouldn’t even know where to start so I’d put it off. But if I saw “Declutter Everly’s closet and drawers” – boom - I know exactly what to do and it doesn’t feel so daunting.
Another example – Hustle Sanely’s designer told me that one time she put “monthly quotes” on her Focus 3 (you know – those cutie little inspirational quote pages for each month) and she was overwhelmed because that task takes a long time and there was no way to get that all done in one day. So the next day, she changed it to “Work on monthly quotes for 2 hours” – which is obviously very clear and doable compared to “monthly quotes” – which insinuates getting all 12 done at once.
So if you find yourself not finishing your Focus 3 tasks, make sure you’re giving yourself managable and realistic Focus 3s each day.
Reason #3: You’re not working in alignment with your energy.
When I used to hear the word energy, I’d give a side-eye. It sounded very woo woo and I was turned off. So if that’s you, hear me out. When I say to work in alignment with your energy, all I’m saying is to work smarter, not harder.
If you have the most mental energy at the start of the day, schedule your mentally taxing tasks for the beginning of the day.
If you have the most physical energy in the afternoons, do your workouts after work instead of in the mornings.
When we work in alignment with our energy, we usually get tasks done quicker and better (hello, efficiency) because we’re not trying to do tasks from a place of running on fumes.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: Schedule your tasks based on when you have the best type of energy required to do them.
I highly recommend doing an energy assessment if you’ve never done one! There is one that I created in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle course workbook that helps my students figure out when they have what type of energy during certain times of the day, so they can build their schedule accordingly.
Also highly recommend reading the book At Your Best by Carey Nieuwhof if you haven’t. We read it in the BFF Membership a few years ago and this book is all about figuring out your green, yellow, and red zones – aka when your energy is high for certain things versus when it’s lower.
Obviously, we can’t schedule our entire lives based on just our own energy (we have families and bosses, lol) but even focusing on what parts of your schedule you can control and paying attention to how you’re planning things according to your energy during those blocks is still huge!
Reason #4: You’re trying to cram too much into your days.
Did you know that even though a traditional workday is 8 hours, no one is actually productive for that amount of time in a single day?
There have been studies that show that typically the ideal work hours per day for a human to be productive are 3-4 hours. For most people, the actual work hours are 2-3 hours, with 6 hours being the maximum productive hours in a day.
WILD, right?
We spend so much time every day chasing our tails trying to tick tons of tasks off of a to-do list when in reality, we have 3-4 hours of true productive energy.
Another thing that I learned about productivity – there is this thing called Parkinson’s Law that states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
As in, if you give yourself a year to accomplish a goal, you’ll probably take the whole year to do it. If you give yourself a 6-hour block of time to clean your house, it’ll probably take all 6 hours.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: Lessen the amount of time you dedicate to your to-do list every day.
When I learned these 2 things – that we’re only productive for 3-4 hours and that tasks will take as much time as you give them, I started getting serious about doing my most important tasks of the day, during the first half of the day. So instead of grabbing my to-do list and starting with the “easiest” tasks, I start with my Focus 3 tasks… the most important ones, because I want them to get my best time and energy.
I’ve shared this analogy before but it’s been a minute so let’s revisit it – imagine you have a jar, a pile of 3 big rocks, and a pile of a bunch of small pebbles. If you dump all of the pebbles into the jar first, you’re not going to be able to fit the big rocks in the jar. But if you flip it, and put the big rocks in first, you can dump the pebbles in and they’ll fit by filling in the gaps around the big rocks.
This is how I imagine my to-do list every day. When I give my best time and energy to my Focus 3 (the big rocks), other smaller, less important tasks wind up getting done.
But if I start with the smaller less important tasks (the pebbles), they use up all of my energy and I don’t have enough energy left to do the big tasks well.
I don’t need as much energy to do the less important tasks as I do the more important tasks so it makes sense to start with the important tasks. Now, my work days are 6 hours long and I spend the first half of them doing the most important tasks.
Reason #5: Your well-being needs are being neglected.
Well-being is defined as the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.
How often do we put the basics like getting good sleep, moving our bodies, and eating nourishing meals on the back burner? TOO OFTEN!
These things are called the basics for a reason – they are the building blocks of how you show up for your life. Making sure that your well-being is a priority is the best thing you can do for yourself and your family.
It doesn’t always feel convenient to prioritize your well-being but it’s necessary. If you’re running on fumes because your needs aren’t being met, your to-do list is going to feel daunting before you even look at it. Because you’re lacking energy!
When you are operating from a healthy and happy state, that spills over into all other areas of your life.
~ You have more energy to work toward your goals rather than just longingly wishing your life was different.
~ You have more patience when your toddler is having a meltdown rather than having a meltdown alongside them.
~ You have more capacity to be present in relationships that matter to you rather than feeling like a deflated whoopie cushion with nothing left to offer at the end of the day.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: Weave well-being habits and routines into your life.
Don’t roll your eyes and humph – take this seriously! I’m not asking you to carve out 3 hours a day to take bubble baths and go to a yoga class, okay?
I’m encouraging you to make sure that you are sprinkling habits into your day that make you feel healthy, happy, and comfy.
Here’s the truth – you’re already eating meals so you might as well make an effort to make the meals nourish you.
You’re already showering every day (or almost every day) so you might as well elevate the experience by enjoying a podcast or audiobook while you’re in there.
You’re already putting clothes on every day, so you might as well get rid of the clothes in your closet that you hate so that you feel good about what you’re putting on.
Some of my favorite habits and routines that help me prioritize my well-being are:
~ Going on family walks to chat with my husband
~ Writing a prayer and a list of affirmations in my journal eerie morning and reading the page out loud
~ Eating my lunch outside to get some sunshine
~ Sipping iced coffee in my morning shower
Nothing crazy… it’s just me being intentional about filling up my own cup throughout the day so that I don’t wind up as that deflated whoopie cushion.
Alright those are a few reasons why you might not be getting your to-do list done! Here they are again for a quick recap:
Reason #1: You’re using a running daily to-do list.
Reason #2: Your Focus 3 tasks are too big.
Reason #3: You’re not working in alignment with your energy.
Reason #4: You’re trying to cram too much into your days.
Reason #5: Your well-being needs are being neglected.
INTRODUCING
The Hustle Sanely Lifestyle Course
All the tools and strategies you need to ditch overwhelm once and for all!
Use the code PEACEFULLIFE for $50 off your enrollment!
Loved this blog post? Tune into the full podcast episode below!
