What is The To-Do List Loop and How To Break Free For Good
Hint: there's more on that list than you can realistically do.
I love a good list! Meeting other people who love making lists creates an immediate need in me to bond and become best friends for life. When I make a new list, doesn't matter what for, I instantly feel like I am in control and being my most productive. The operative word is "feel". Recently I have discovered my lists were actually making me less productive. GASP! I know. How the hell is a list going to make you less productive? It's literally a step by step guide of everything you need to do. Just do it! Yeah this isn't a Nike commercial or a weird Shia Labouf meme. It's not that simple.
You see, in my haste to get everything on my list completed, I would fall into the trap of adding more than I could actually do and promising myself that if I didn't finish it today, I would definitely finish it tomorrow. Spoiler alert: I didn't. Instead I would just find more things that needed to get done and add it to the list and become increasingly more overwhelmed and, as a result, less productive.
I had this coming to Jesus moment while looking at my latest much too long list and trying to figure out which task I wanted to tackle first. Nothing jumped out at me so I would just close my notes app and go waste time. Later, I would feel like total crap for not getting anything done. So, needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - this wasn't working. Something had to change.
So like any wanna be research scientist and blogger, I got to work on figuring out how to break free of what I have deemed the “List Loop”. I was creating super long lists and not setting any expectations for actually getting anything on it done. I needed a way make my list, wait for it: doable! So, if you feel like you're stuck in a list loop this is the right post for you! I'm going to do a quick and dirty dive into the tips I used to break free of my own list loop so you can actually start getting shit done.
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