Before You Need Them
When was the last time you felt buried by your to-do list?
Felt overwhelmed, anxious, stuck by it?
Tempted to toss it out the window and hide under the covers with your dog and pretend none of it existed?
For me? Today.
I felt all of that today.
Between a packed day with my awesome clients, my niece’s championship meet, my 6-mile run, 30 minutes in an online class I’m taking, and all of my usual morning routine things, PLUS getting this post written (writing is hard…so many thoughts to share, but finding the right words…phew!), I took one look at my planned day and immediately froze— how was I going to manage to get it all done?
Thankfully, I have been cultivating habits in my life for a long time that are designed to combat these feelings and get me unstuck fast.
And today I leaned hard on one of them:
My critical task list.
This is simply a list of items I need to complete each day in order to consider the day a “win.”
When I first began this habit, I curated a list of things that were tied to what mattered to me— habits or tasks that would either move me forward in some way or get me in the right mindset to tackle what needed to be done.
Going over this list always helps me remember what is important to me, not just what is urgent in the moment.
And having cultivated this habit for so long, even in the midst of today’s moment of overwhelm, I was easily able to slip into the rhythm of doing one thing at a time, moving down that list until it was complete.
By the time I got there, I felt equipped to manage the rest of my to-do list for the day without the attendant anxiety.
2 takeaways I learned from this:
There is a huge amount of power in having created routines and habits I can lean on in times of stress or overwhelm. I was so glad I’d already put these habits in place for myself before I felt stuck or frozen so that they were accessible to me when I really needed them most.
A critical task list is as awesome a tool as I thought it was!
Give it a try:
Make a list of 3-5 things that must be completed daily in order for you to bring you closer to your goals.
Then do them, one at a time.
Rinse and repeat daily until they are engrained habits or you’re ready to move to the next set of tasks.
Try it for the next week— just test it out and see what happens.
Then email me or leave a comment here and tell me about it!