PP 067: Taming Our To-Do List

Resources: Taming Our To-Do List

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Episode Transcription

Hey there! Welcome back to another episode.

I want you to take a quick second, and pull out your “To Do list”. I know you have one – it’s on a sheet of paper or – its on the internet, but just take a quick look.

By the way, if you’re driving. No! I don’t want you to do this but, I know somewhere in the back of your mind you can picture the items that are on it.

Now, I want you to picture the items that are on your “Immediate To Do List”. These are the items that you’ve told yourself that: “Come hell or high water, you are going to accomplish those items today”.

Taming Our To-Do List

Take a deeper look at that list.

I am not trying to be pessimistic at all, but how many items on that list can you realistically get done? It’s not a bad thing to say: “You can only get one, two or three items on a list done in any particular day”. What tends to happen however, and I am included – when I say this is that: “We CREATE a To Do list that is 10 miles long, and then at the end of the day upon reflecting we feel like we didn’t accomplish as much as we really did”.

Does this sound familiar?

Taming Our To-Do List

I am guilty of having to do lists of 10 to 15 items each and every day, and I’ve decided this needs to end! From here on out, I am putting the items on the list that I have no doubt I should be able to accomplish today.

And then on a separate page in my journal, I have written out everything I can possibly think of, but, it is out of sight, NOT really out of mind but, I will refer to it after the items on my “Immediate To Do List” are tackled. This evening, when I reflect at what I got done for the day – I can be super pumped up and I can see a whole bunch of checked off boxes, rather than 10 or 11 boxes with only one, two or three items checked off.

Taming Our To-Do List

I totally realize that some projects are a lot bigger than others, and when this is the case, it would be a great idea to break down your bigger projects into smaller tasks so you can still have that feeling of accomplishment.

In his book “Eat That Frog,” Brian Tracy talks about – how checking items off our “To Do List” produces a hormone to all of our biology buffs. I don’t remember which hormone… oops… and we become addicted to that hormone, and we want more, and more, and more, and we get that when – we keep on seeing those little boxes checked off.

Taming Our To-Do List

I invite you to join me today or tomorrow depending on when you’re listening in “Taming Your To-Do List”. Cut it down to the one two or three items that you know you can get to, and let the rest go. Keep them on a separate page. I would love to hear how this works for you so please visit my website at TheKimSutton.com/PP067  and let me know how it works. Until the next episode, I hope you have a positive and productive day.