When doing more is actually less.
Lately, I’ve lacked motivation. Like most people, I go through spells of being really motivated and able to get loads done and then other times, like recently, I don’t seem to be able to get much of anything done. Coupled with a crippling fear of failure I was getting nowhere.
With my to-do list constantly growing, I was finding that the little daily tasks I had put in place to improve myself, were becoming a chore and rather than making me feel better, they were making me feel like a complete failure if I didn’t get it all done. Some days, getting all of those things done was virtually impossible.
It took me a while to realise it, but what I needed was to reduce that to-do list. Did I really need to do self-reflection and do my 750 words? Isn’t that just repetitive? What was I achieving from this? So I went through my daily to-do list and I ruthlessly deleted things.
If I am going to do something, I’ll do it because I want to do it, not because it’s on my to-do list. I want to enjoy doing things, rather than see them as a chore, I have enough of those in life as it is.
If one day, I feel like filling in my self-reflection planner, then I will. It’s perfectly ok not to do that every day, I never read any of it back anyway. This doesn’t need to be on my to-do list, making me feel like I have too much to do.
I can spend those 10 or 15 minutes each day doing something else, something that’s enjoyable and adds value. I don’t need a to-do list for things that I am going to do, what I need is a list of things that I need to remember to do, those things that I don’t do often so I am likely to forget.
My to-do list, or should I say my list of reminders, looks much more manageable now and as the list gets lower my motivation to do other things, such as writing, gets higher.
Now, I will start each day with just 3 intentions for the day, it could be something as small as drinking 2 litres of water if they’re important enough to me, they’ll get done.
