The Must-Do List Will Change Your Life
A simple organizational trick to stop overwhelm before it starts; plus a few words on protecting your "me time."
Happy Monday, my fearless fucklings! This week’s topic comes straight from the mail bag—aka the NFG Chat—where it was raised by not one, but two of my VIFs.
And that topic is…OVERWHELM.
Kind of a wide target, eh? As such, I’m going to start with one all-purpose tip for stopping it in its tracks, and then get a little more granular to address the specific issues of work-life balance that Sally and Bonnie were asking about in the chat.
Let’s do this!
(And if you weren’t aware of the NFG Chat, well, here’s a handy link. It’s a perk for paid subscribers, and if you have topics you want me to address in future posts, this is the place to suggest them.)
The Must-Do List will change your life
Folks, today I proudly present you with THE #1 tool I use to organize my time, increase focus and productivity, and—crucially—prevent overwhelm before it occurs.
I’ve been employing it in one form or another since college, but it was only when I wrote Get Your Shit Together that I gave it a formal name: The Must-Do Method.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Make a to-do list
Step 2: Prioritize the items on that list by urgency
Step 3: Move what MUST get done today to a “must-do” list
Step 4: Do that stuff and save the rest for tomorrow
Step 5: Repeat Steps 1-4
The reason the Must-Do Method works so well is because of its organizing principle: urgency.
Prioritizing strictly by deadline eliminates emotional sabotage in the form of “I don’t feel like doing that” or “But X would be easier than Y” or “I just like the person who asked for this more than I like the person who asked for that.”
(Oh, please. You know exactly what—and who—I’m talking about.)
It’s not that these aren’t valid ways to decide how you approach your to-do list, but in my experience, they are ripe for corruption. You wind up doing three non-urgent things just because they’re easier, and then running out of time for the thing you should have been doing. Oopsie.
Whereas the Must-Do Method reduces everything to brass tacks. You look dispassionately at your list, and you arrange it by due date and nothing more.
The result of separating what truly must get done first from all the other shit you have to do eventually is…A MUCH SHORTER LIST.
Which is automatically…LESS OVERWHELMING.
You love to see it.
And if your problem is procrastination—of all tasks—the MDM helps you there too. You’re literally supposed to find things to put off until tomorrow! Turning your to-do list into a must-do list is productive procrastination at its finest. Enjoy.
(And if adhering to this method shortens your list so much that you actually have a bunch of free time on your hands, sure, you can start on the next most-urgent round of tasks. It’s nice to get ahead! But you don’t have to, because you already did the stuff you MUST DO today. Have a nap. Or a cocktail. Or both.)
Back when I worked in an office, I would employ the Must-Do Method with a physical list on an old-fashioned notepad. On that pad, I kept my running to-do list—everything that popped up on any given day.
But at the end of each workday, I would scan that list and transfer only the most urgent tasks—the ones that needed to be accomplished first—to a fresh piece of paper.
This became my “must-do” list for the following day.
Then when I showed up at my desk the next morning, I automatically had a more manageable list to attack, which made it both easier to face the day and also much more likely that I would indeed finish everything I needed to do, having significantly narrowed my focus.
And I was able to occasionally slot in last-minute, suddenly-more-urgent-than-anything-else tasks precisely because I had more breathing room in my day to begin with.
(You could also do your to-do → must-do calculations in the morning on the day-of, but personally, it helps me sleep better knowing I have a plan in place the night before.)
These days, instead of a physical notepad, I use the AnyList app on my phone. (There is also a desktop version.) I keep a running to-do list that I add to as things come up or spring to mind.1 And at night in bed, I rearrange my list (now by dragging and dropping instead of transferring to a new page) to put the most urgent tasks at the top.
Those are what I’ll tackle tomorrow—no ifs, ands, or but-I-don’t-feel-like-its!
All of this is to say, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, your epic to-do list may be the problem…but not necessarily for the reason you think it is. Try rearranging it as a must-do list and see how that works out for ya. I have a good feeling about it.
Me time is a right, not a privilege
Now, let’s move on to Sally’s version of overwhelm, which she deemed in the chat “a constant problem, despite giving less fucks about things. Kids, work, home—what about me?!”
Indeed, Sally. Indeed.
As it happens, I address this conundrum in Get Your Shit Together as well, and it’s for this very reason that I now keep my personal and professional to-dos ON THE SAME LIST.
Otherwise, there’s a risk that everything I want/need to do for myself will constantly be falling off at Step 4, never to rise to the top. Never “urgent enough” to make the cut.
And honestly?
Fuck that noise.
Believe me, I understand it can be difficult to justify making time for activities and tasks that seem to benefit no one but yourself. And I see how on its surface, “make a hair color appointment” may not seem as tangibly important as, say, hitting a deadline for my next book.
But it does have its own level of urgency if I don’t want to be going out in the world in <estimates rate at which grays are sneaking in> two weeks with a silver stripe down the middle of my head.
So into the queue it goes, and then the appointment itself is on the fucking calendar, and it’s a thing I really must do. (I have great respect for calendars.)
Okay, you may be thinking. I get that there’s technically a ticking clock when it comes to your roots starting to show. But what about pure “me time” that has no discernible purpose? How am I supposed to consider a round of golf or a spa day or just locking myself in my room to read a book for two hours as anything approaching “must-do?”
I hear you on that too, but Get Your Shit Together is all about mental decluttering—training yourself to think differently about your life and how you arrange it, ideally around maximum joy and minimal annoy.
Like, sure, you need get up and go to work because you need to make money to pay your rent.
But wouldn’t you say that you also need to NOT be sad and NOT be frazzled and NOT be marinating in a cauldron of resentment 24/7 because you’re never able to prioritize doing things for yourself?
Uh huh.
Which also means there IS a “discernible purpose” to stuff like that.
If blowing off a little steam at the Go-Kart track or puttering in the garden or taking salsa dancing lessons or zoning out to Elvis Costello while you perfect your latest batch of home brew is what ups the joy in your life and balances out the annoy, then PUT. IT. ON. THE. LIST.
And then if you need to define/justify the urgency of any of that stuff in order to keep it from landing in Step 4 purgatory, just remind yourself what happens when Sally doesn’t get her me time.
How long can you realistically go without burning out or melting down, before you need a hit of that sweet, sweet self-care?
A self-imposed deadline is still a deadline, so schedule it in.
Then do it.
And save the rest for tomorrow.
Last but not least, in the chat Bonnie mentioned being overwhelmed at work, saying: “I’d like to give just enough fucks to stay employed, but I’m done overachieving and giving way too many fucks.”
To which I say, it seems like you’re already on the right path here, lady!
But allow me to resurface this post from March 25th, which goes a little deeper into aspects of working life that one may be able to strike from the to-do list altogether, and still collect that paycheck.
Not for nothing, in my re-read of this post I realized how nicely it ties into last week’s treatise on not giving a fuck about being liked. To wit:
Most of us give too many fucks when it comes to work.
UNNECESSARY fucks, that is. And by “unnecessary,” I mean we’re spending time, energy, and/or money on aspects of our working life that have little to no bearing on whether we are actually doing a good job.
Often, these fucks are expended in the form of worrying about what other people think—and what have I told you about that, time and time again?
You can’t control what other people think. Which means that worrying about whether they do and/or how to make them do it is a waste of your precious fuck bucks.
You can only control YOUR actions and behavior.
And in a professional environment, it’s more important to act and behave in a way that prioritizes “getting your work done” than it is to waste time and energy on stupid shit that’s just dragging you down—up to and including “whether people like you while you’re getting your work done.”
The Likability Vortex occurs when you find yourself caring (and worrying) more about being LIKED than about being WORTHY OF RESPECT, and then you wind up floundering inside a devastating fucknado of your own design, wasting fuck bucks left and right on shit that has very little bearing on your job performance.
So there you have it, sports fans. Three ways to kick overwhelm to the curb: make a must-do list; put your me time in the calendar; and beware the Likability Vortex!
Until next time,
Sarah
I also use this app for grocery lists, TV shows I want to remember to watch, Books I want to remember to read, etc. It’s a little slice of organizational heaven.
I had not seen this post; thank you so much for sharing. This speaks volumes to me. I haven’t had a good nights sleep in about 157 years (give or take).
Oh, I like this. I have been making to-do lists forever. Gives me a feeling of control over my time. This also makes me think of the saying, “that’s tomorrow’s problem”. It’s weird that it never occurred to before today… I can make something tomorrow’s problem for infinity. Like all the future what-ifs and worries that trigger my panic switch. Today, all is well. That worry? That belongs to tomorrow. And if the writers and poets and singers are right, tomorrow never comes.