Welcome to Episode #157. I'm Kristi Angevine, your host of the podcast, and this podcast is here to help you understand why you think, feel, and act as you do so that you can unwire habits that take more than they give and design new approaches to help you be intentional in your everyday life. If you ever struggle with a to-do list that feels impossible yet critically necessary, this episode is for you.

Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now, here's your host, Physician, and Master Certified Life Coach, Kristi Angevine.

Hello, hello, everybody. So if you're listening to this in real time, this is right about the time of the year where New Year's resolutions run out of steam and people's to-do lists start piling up. You have a planner that has the same 25 items carried over from week to week. The notes section in your iPhone is labeled #short-to-do's, but it has 87 items on it. And you know how it goes.

Even if you only have four things on your list, life happens and maybe you get part of one of those things on your list done. And despite the fact that you have done lots and lots and lots and lots of things in your day, your list of accomplishments seems small, and you end the day feeling behind, feeling like you can't catch up, feeling like there's just not enough time to do the things that you really must do.

So there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, but there are a myriad of productivity hacks out there, productivity products out there, productivity programs. And some of these are really good. Some of them are catchy, but highly ineffective for most of us.

And given the volume of suggestions and advice and really great research that exists out there, I have a part of me that's been really reluctant to add any of the noise. Because I feel like there are some really good pieces of advice that work for some people. There are some silly seeming things that don't work for most people but work great for a handful. And in the end all of us kind of figure out what works for us and it's different for each of us and it's different for each of us, and it's different for each of us in every season of life.

But that said, I think sometimes just having a framework and having a simple approach that kind of gives you a bit of a scaffolding to your list, if you like a list, something that can help you get done what you wanna get done and minimize all the drama. Now, if you have an approach to your to-do list and you love it, I'd love to hear about it.

Some people don't do a to-do list, they do a to-done list, like this is what I did at the end of the day. Other people, they don't do a to-do list, they only calendar the times when they will do the things. So it's just, this is when I will do this, this is when I will do that. And you may think to-do lists are just not for you. And if that's the case, brilliant.

But if you are like many people, you may have found that your to-do list seems never-ending. Or it's the same to-do list that you've had for the last five years with some minor variations. Or it follows you in your head. It's your running mental to-do list. It's running, running, running, running, like a terrible background song you hear in the grocery store that you cannot get out of your head. And because it's constantly there, you might just feel exhausted and busy, yet behind regardless of how productive you actually are.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't say that there's all sorts of mindset work that's really important to supporting a sense of focus and ease with any of the tasks that you'd like to accomplish. But this episode is all about a concrete framework so that you can set your realistic intentions and avoid the trap of having a discrepancy between what you've actually accomplished and what's sitting incomplete on your beautiful to-do list, which is a special form of hell for many of us.

So here is a simple framework that you can use to really get clear on a to-do list that's realistic and one that can support you in getting where you wanna go. So first, you take all the things that you want to do and you divide them into three categories.

Now, you can start off with a list for like, this is all the stuff I wanna do for the year, this is all the stuff that I would like to do for my project, this is all the stuff I'd like to do for the week, this is all the things I want to do for today, this is all the stuff that I want to do for my specific task of planning my vacation, for whatever it is. You can pick a task or you can pick a day. But most of the time you're going to be picking instead of just one area, you're going to be thinking like, what am I going to do on Monday? But if you like to pick a certain area or the entire year, you can use this same approach.

So whatever duration you pick, like your to-do list for the year, or whatever area of focus you pick, like this is what I'm gonna do Monday, or this is what I'm gonna do to complete my project, you can use the same thing. Now, I'm teaching this in the way of talking about what you're going to do on a particular day. And the categories for a particular day are essential items, important items, and would-be-nice items.

So these are the three ways you categorize and clarify your priorities. So essential tasks, they must be done today. Or if this is for the entire year, they must be done by in a very short duration. So essential tasks, they must be done today. They clearly take precedence over other things. And there cannot be too many of these in a day because these are the things that you will do. They are essential, they must happen.

Then, important. Important tasks, they add value, they can't wait too long, and they'll likely move to the essential list once there's room, but they could happen another day.

Then would-be-nice tasks, they are things that, it'd be nice if you could do it, you'd love it if you had time, but they are not critical. They can totally wait.

Now, for some of you, this can be very easy to say what's essential, what's important, and what would be nice. But sometimes it's a little bit more complex and it can be tricky. So if that's the case for you, here are some ways to address the common difficulty of discerning between essential tasks and important tasks. The way you discern between what's essential and what's important but not essential for today is to ask yourself these questions for each task:

Does this need to happen today, for practical reasons? Like, is it a deadline today that is firm? Is it a time-sensitive task I must do today? Is it a thing that will affect the day's flow? If I don't do it today, it could have long-reaching consequences. Meaning, do I need to marinate the chicken today because I want to cook it tomorrow? Okay, that may be a time-sensitive thing that for practical reasons needs to be essential.

So number 2, does this contribute directly to my emotional well-being or relationships today? So you can have something on your list of important things, but if one of your values is connection and you only have one more day with a friend in town, or one more day where you have a couple extra hours after school to spend with your kid, then even though something isn't critical, like no one's dying if you don't have coffee with your friend or spend a couple hours with your kid. But, since you can't do it later, and it would contribute directly to your emotional well-being or your relationships today, it therefore goes on the list of essential things. And might trump something that you thought was essential but is actually only important.

So number 3 is, would delaying this task cause a ripple effect and create more stress later on? So you could have something on your list of important things to do. Like, I need to make flight reservations for this trip. It's important, but like, I can do it tomorrow. Like, presuming there's flights left, it's physically possible to do it on Tuesday as opposed to on Monday. But if I wait till Tuesday as opposed to Monday, I will be delaying communicating to somebody when I'm arriving in town. I might be pushing something back because I don't know things. If doing dishes was on my list of important things, not my essentials, but because the dishes aren't done, I can't go in the kitchen and start cooking something because I have to deal with this pile of dishes, then the dishes actually might be essential because they would delay me from doing something else or they would create more stress later because they're not done.

So if you're trying to discern between essentials and importants, the three questions are, does it need to happen today for practical reasons? Does it contribute directly to my emotional well-being or relationships today? And would delaying this task cause a ripple effect or more stress later? Now once you have your categories, essential, important, and would-be nice, then you kind of have a sense of what you're going to do.

Now, you're gonna have to look at your day and say, okay, when can I do these essential things? And that brings me to the next question. You owe it to yourself, once you have your three categories, to ask yourself two questions. I'm gonna go through them one at a time. The two questions are, in what timeline will I do these things? Like, where in my day are these things actually gonna happen? And is it realistic to have these things today?

So I highly recommend that you get into a regular practice of doing a very clear reality check. And this is what your reality check can look like. On an ordinary average day with ordinary average things, is it completely realistic to expect that I can get these things done? Is it a stretch to get these things done? Or is it magical thinking to get these things done?

So you wanna think about average days because average days have unexpected things come up. Average days have delays that you don't expect. Extraordinary, smooth, amazing days you might have extra time in. But if you plan your list and the things that you expect to get done based on the optimal extraordinary day, like where there's no traffic, all green lights, you get the best parking spot ever, you find everything in the grocery store within seconds, and somehow all of your charts are just easy to sign off on. Your labs are normal. You don't have any ornery tantrums to deal with with the people you live with. You wake up feeling well-rested to get your exercise done. On those extraordinary days, you might be able to get more things done than on an ordinary average day.

But if you plan your list based on the extraordinary days, you're usually gonna be disappointed. So your reality check is on an ordinary average day with ordinary average things, is it completely realistic to expect I can get these things done? And if it is a stretch or if it's magical thinking, that's where you need to tweak and adjust. So if something on your essential list cannot be done in one day in the time that you have to do it in, you need to reassess your timeline and reassess what is essential for you to do today.

So here's an example. Say you have on your list of essential things to declutter your garage. And this is because you are dead set on that being taken care of ASAP. And then you consider you have about five hours of time in which to do whatever you would like to do from the moment you get up to the moment you have, say an important meeting or you have to go pick up your kids. And when you do your reality check you realize it's actually not likely to get all the way done with decluttering the garage especially if you're going to also go get groceries, or you need to start marinating the chicken you want for dinner tonight or tomorrow, or you have something else to do that feels very important, so much so that it's essential. And you go, ooh, I actually have a bunch of things I need to do. So I don't really have five hours. I actually have maybe about two and a half hours. Can I declutter the garage in two and a half hours?

Now, sometimes the answer is yes. The answer is, you know what? I think I need five hours. But really, if I do one hour of very clear focus work I can get done exactly what I want to get done. Other times you have something that is very very big and you need to take this very large item and you need to break it into smaller manageable tasks so that it can actually fit into the timeline you have.

So declutter the garage becomes work for 30 minutes using maybe a Pomodoro technique if you like that. Set a timer, work as much as you can for 30 minutes on just focusing on clearing out as much space as you can. Or in the time you have, take three boxes to the car and text your partner to please take these to the donation bin when you go past it.

So you can take what was a large thing on your list of essentials and break it into something more manageable and still keep it on the list of essentials. But then at the end of the day, instead of going, oh, I couldn't declutter the garage, I didn't even get anything done.

All I did was move three boxes around. You'll be able to say, yeah, I did exactly what I was hoping I could do. I worked for 30 minutes and I moved three boxes. I am well on my way to decluttering the garage. And in this way, you don't have this monstrous task following you simply because you weren't being realistic about what was actually feasible to accomplish. And It's so simple, but it's so easy to miss.

So once you have the essential, the important, the would-be nice, you've put it through the reality test, you've adjusted and taken anything that's too big and made it smaller. And then you've looked at what time you have and figure out sort of when you can do what. Here is the magic question. I say magic, but like, here's just the powerful question to ask that makes everything really click into place. What would make this easy? What would make this list as easy as possible? Or how can I infuse this list with ease?

So here is what this looks like. You take your list and you ask, would it be easy if I did this first and that second, or this second and that first? Would it be better for something on the essentials to actually happen tomorrow? Because then I'll have had more sleep and I'll be able to focus on that cognitive task. Okay, my essentials, yes, that actually needs to shift. That would be easier.

Would it be easy if I eliminated one of the would-be-nices, or I delayed something that's quite important so that I just have more space for the essential thing? Would it be easy if I broke up the essential thing into three smaller tasks and I moved some of the essential things down to the important list? What would make it easier?

Sometimes you'll think, wow, it would be easier if I just didn't do something that I would really like to do today, because I like to do it every day, but it can actually wait because I really need some space. It's critically important for me to have an extra hour and a half today. So let's say you have a yoga class that you want to do and you do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's really important for your well-being, it feels great, you love it, but in the face of something that is essential where you really need about an extra hour of time, you can decide to take something that is important to you, like your yoga class, and shift it off your list, knowing that it gives you something important for what's essential today, like the bandwidth and the time that you need to do something essential. And your plan B is, I move that yoga class to another day.

So this isn't just, I'm gonna get rid of something that seems superfluous but it's actually really important. This is, sometimes I make hard choices for things that they're not as essential as something else And I slide them in or work them in somewhere else.

Now, of course, you have to be careful with this, right? It would be very easy to have things that you are committed to doing for your well-being that because it's very easy to think self-care is a luxury and that you should actually do other things first, that those get taken off the list.

You know, I think it's essential to sleep seven or eight hours or whatever you sleep, but really my actual essential thing is I need to create 75 Christmas cards or Christmas cupcakes or whatever it is. So I'm just going to do three hours of sleep because this is essential. Now there's a time and a place for that, right? But if you're chronically doing that, that's turning things upside down.

But strategically, you can be very, very clear on how can you make it easy to do the things that are essential. Now, if you were drawing a complete blank when you ask these questions about what would make it easy or easier. Start with what is getting in the way. When I look at this list, what makes it difficult to do? What keeps me from getting going right this very second? You can ask, what do I anticipate later in the day that's gonna make it so that these things are not inevitable to complete? And so what you do here is you make a list of all the obstacles and you wanna be really honest. What can you do and what will you do to counter or deal with these obstacles?

Once you do that, you now have some data to sink your teeth into for how you can make it easier. So let me give you an example. If I had on my list that I need to write an article and I ask myself, what's gonna make it easy? Well, I might come up with things like, well, it would make it easy if I was an expert and I knew what the heck I was doing, and it would make it easy if I could just be quicker at writing and be better at doing one of these things. And those answers are not helpful, right?

So when I am not sure about realistic things that are going to make it easier for me to do something that's essential, I flip it and I look at what makes it hard. So when I look at what might make this hard, what does make it difficult, I may find that I am worried about how long it's going to take, I'm worried about it being good enough, I feel like I need more time to do research, and then I look at my day and realize I do not have an uninterrupted chunk of time longer than 45 minutes. I've got 30 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 45 minutes later on. And then I do have two hours, but those two hours are at 8 o'clock at night when I'm doing the worst of my thinking.

And so I realize that, oh my gosh, there's this time constraint that's going to make it so that I cannot have a long enough stretch of time to work. I'm only gonna have these short punctuated amounts and that's really hard. So now I have my list of things that are difficult. So then I can ask, so what would it make it easier with these obstacles?

So maybe I rearrange my day so I have more uninterrupted time. Or maybe I delay this until another day. Or maybe I decide I'm going to use the 20 minutes I do have and I'm going to use them the best I can. I am in those 20 minutes I'm going to write three sentences. And because of my known tendency to overthink and worry and feel blocked, I'm just going to commit to I will write three sentences even if they are shitty. And in my 30 minute chunk of time later on, I'm going to write a paragraph knowing full well that it is a rough draft and I can deal with editing it later. So then once I have this, now I ask myself again, what would make it easy about these individual components?

So, what would make it easy or easier for me to write those three sentences? Well, if I remind myself that these three sentences are the hardest part of the whole thing, and I just need to get them out, and they can be terrible, and I give myself permission for them to be terrible, and I tell myself and maybe put a sticky note that says, you don't ever have to use these sentences, but you must write them. That'll probably make it easier for me. It'll also make it easier if I give myself a three minute break to listen to a song that I love. So I will sort of shamelessly bribe myself to do this, and that will make it a little bit easier.

And then I ask, so what's going to make it easier to write a paragraph? Well, pretty much the same thing, and I will explicitly remind myself it does not have to be perfect. And you know what, I might even set myself a timer. Since I've got 30 minutes, I'll set a five-minute timer and I'll force myself to write as fast as possible. I'll take a three-minute break, and then for 15 minutes, that's when I'm just gonna review what I wrote, maybe add some other things.

See how I had no clue what would make something easy and so I flip the script and I look at what's difficult. Once I know it's difficult, then I start taking those specific things and saying, how can I make it easier? How can I make it fun? But how can I make it easy or infuse some ease into this?

So the brilliance of this strategy is it is simple enough that you don't have to get overwhelmed by too many details and it engages some creativity and some focus and discernment. You have to draw on what really matters most to you, but you also have to keep it in check and be realistic, and then you finish it all off by making sure you're bringing in some ease. And when you do all of this, it calls on you to be in a certain frame of mind, almost like invokes a certain way of approaching. And it gives you some checks and balances to ensure that you're not being overly grandiose, that you're not coming from urgency or stress or simply squishing too many things in, out of habit.

So let's just recap on this. When you have a to-do list that follows you around, feels like you're not getting traction on it, or at the end of every day, your refrain is, "I'm just so far behind, there's just too much to do." This is what you try instead.

You take your list, and you do these three things. You clarify what actually matters into these three categories: essential, important, and would-be-nice. From those three, you do a realistic check of your timeline. How realistic is it for me to get these things done today? If it's realistic, great, roll on. If it's not realistic, adjust.

And then you ask the magic powerful question, "What would make this easy? What would make this easier? What would bring ease to this list as I complete it?"

And that is a wrap for today. So if you liked this very oh-so-strategic episode of the Habits on Purpose Podcast, I encourage you to keep listening. If you are new here, I'm so glad that you came.

This podcast is filled with a mix of practical strategies like this episode, as well as deeper topics that go sort of behind some of the mindset, some of the parts in our systems, some of the internalized, socialized rules that we have that guide the things that we do every day on autopilot and explores them in a way that is really practical so you can take what you learn and then use certain tools in your day-to-day life to make some meaningful changes.

So if this type of thing is something you enjoy listening to, keep listening, follow or subscribe to the podcast, share with a friend, and then most definitely go join the email list. You can find it at https://habitsonpurpose.com. And when you're on the email list, you'll get emails from me that talk to you about workshops that I'm offering, coaching opportunities that exist, and places that I'm going to be speaking. So I go speak at several events through the year and this year, there are several more coming up. So on the list, you'll hear about all of them and maybe we can connect in real life. Until next week, I'll see you soon.

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Take care, and I look forward to connecting.

Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com. Tune in next week for another episode.