Are you always racing to catch up?
We all have our days filled already.
We are all using our 24 hours already.
So when we want to add in something new or branch out into a new venture we have to accommodate that in those same 24 hours! And if you’re already struggling, forever chasing your tail already, then you’re going to need to overhaul your systems and get them working for you.
Not YOU working for your system!
I used to be like this!
I’d have so many ideas, so many things I wanted to do, and so many things I “had” to do.
(I’ll come back to “have to do” in a minute …)
I never got it all done.
I remember a friend with a new baby saying “I don’t know what I used to do all day before he was born - but I’m at full stretch now!”
She was managing perfectly well.
And she’d just had a 36-hour time-suck inserted into her 24 hours!
Of course, it was a very much loved and welcome time-suck, but when you suddenly have to devote your energies to something or someone new - you can do it!
Many of you will have had children and know the disruption to your daily life that they bring - but you managed. So when we want to start on something new why do we quail and say, “I can’t do all this?”
Here’s the answer
Well - this is why. It’s because you haven’t got a system working for you (yet!). You’re trying to shoe-horn everything in wherever you can find the space. You decide what to do next based on your mood - and things keep slipping through.
Do you have a to-do list?
And does that to-do list get longer and scruffier each day?
And do you stare at in despair, shake your head and put it aside again?
Whenever you look at it does it silently reproach you for being useless, ineffectual, unable to - as they say - “run a piss-up in a brewery”?!
Well, here’s a BIIIIG secret for you:
BIN IT! 🗑
Get rid of it.
Gone. 💨
No to-do list. 😱
You absolutely don’t need a piece of paper to be dictating your mood every day; your sense of self-worth; your feelings of accomplishment.
Can’t quite get yourself to get rid of it entirely?
Ok, here’s a compromise:
You know how they say that when you move house any box you haven’t unpacked in six months should be dumped in a skip?(I suppose you can exempt the Christmas decoration box or the very special baby gear you want to pass on to your grandchildren.)
But the rest of them …
Well, do the same with your to-do list.
Any item that’s been on there longer than a couple of weeks Should be removed.
If it’s been there all this time and you still haven’t dealt with it either it’s not important OR it’s not something you want to do ever.
So - jettison it.
While you reel at this suggestion, I’ll suggest you come and join us in Creativity Central and learn some more riveting new ideas there!
I’ll come back to this subject of the absent to-do list next week, and go more deeply into WHY you have it, and WHY you’re reluctant to get rid of it! Can’t wait …