Why You’ll Never Finish Your To Do List
The Huffington Post ran an article that stuck with me, revealing that 41% of the tasks we put on our to-do list are never completed.
Disheartening? Yes.
True? Also yes...
I used to keep my to-do lists in a variety of places – in the Notes / Reminders app on my phone, in Trello, in Asana, or whatever took my fancy that week.
But I found I never looked at any of the lists and saw them completely crossed off. That felt a little depressing and overwhelming.
Now that I know the 41% stat, I wanted to look at why we never complete our to-do list, and, more importantly, why should we stop focusing on completing our to-do list?
You’ve set too many tasks
To-do lists can set us up to fail for a couple of reasons:
We lump everything together in one list and don’t distinguish the size of each task or how long it will take to complete it. For example, a 15-minute trip to the chemist could be lumped in with starting a website for your new venture – obviously a much larger and more time-consuming task.
You expect you’ll race through your list when we can really only do so many tasks in a day.
Try and allocate time against each task and make sure to use my my free daily planning system: Get Everything Done In A Day.
Pick only certain tasks you can get done that day (including your one, yes one, most important task) and get those completed.
Your focus is off
As driven women, it’s easy to get caught up in the race to perfection.
We strive to complete every work task, home task, wellness task, and on and on, only to collapse into bed at night with a lack of satisfaction.
To-do lists are a useful tool, but focusing on a laundry list of sometimes arbitrary tasks won’t necessarily fill your life with fun and spontaneity.
Yes, use a to-do list but don’t let it run your life to the detriment of relaxation and fun.
You don’t edit your to-do list
Instead of our to-do list getting shorter, we often lump more and more tasks onto it.
I am particularly guilty of this on my personal to-do list on my phone. I have all sorts of to-dos on there – makeup I want to try (thanks, YouTube vloggers), films I want to see, dentist appointments I’m avoiding booking...
But some of those items have been on there for over a year – if I haven’t gotten to them yet, it’s time to edit it down. Say no to items that you’re not doing after a longer period of time, and cull that list!
You forgot to eat your frog
This step ties into the others, but another reason we don’t get through our list is that we’re avoiding tasks we think will be too difficult or unpleasant to complete (hello, dentist).
If you opened your to-do list every day and your most important task was also your least favourite task, imagine how good it would feel to wipe it off that day.
You can purchase the book Eat That Frog for the whole process, but if you complete your most dreaded task today, I promise to book the dentist. Deal?
What will you wipe off your to-do list today?
