Head down the dollar aisle, or the planner aisle at Target – and I bet you’ll see 10 different note pads.. places to keep up with that ever growing ‘to do’ list. And each one of them has at least 20 lines.. just lining up waiting for you to fill them.
And you do. You fill each and every one, because why else would they be there if you weren’t ‘supposed to’ fill them. And I’ll bet you do a good job of marking them off too. But when you don’t finish all of the things on your list, when each task you wrote down on every single little line doesn’t get crossed off – you feel, well…. like you failed.
Has this story ever happened to you?
You have the list, you’re ready to roll, and you just can finish ‘all the things’?
I’m betting it has, because it’s happened to me too. And every single uncrossed task on that list was like a little tiny red x just reminding me that I can’t do it.
But what if I told you those notepads won’t have a single thing to do with your productivity. And they actually maybe hindering it altogether. Would you dump them in the trash? I hope you do.. because there’s a new way to do things.
Here’s the deal.. a ‘to do list’ maybe a necessary evil… my 35 year old brain can’t remember it all. But instead of filling each line – what if I zeroed in on my purpose rather than the tasks I should be doing.
I’ve worked in the productivity coaching space with dozens of women, and each of them has something in common… they have the assumption they can do WAY more than they are actually capable of. And I don’t mean they ‘can’t’ do it – I mean they can’t do it all. Not in a day, hell, not in a week. And what is the point anyway.
Let me break this down, the key is to let the eff go of what you think you SHOULD be doing. Stop shoulding all over yourself – and start focusing on WHY you are doing something.
We consume ourselves with tasks we think we ‘should‘ do. Maybe the internet told us we should, or every other woman our age on Facebook is doing it… but for some reason we think we should be doing it too. And now everyone is out there doing the thing because that’s what we should do.. and no one actually knows why.
Especially in business. You should have an email list. You should be engaging on IG for 20 minutes a day. You should be launching once a quarter. You should have a passive stream of income. You should have an offer suite. Ok, cool… now tell me why.
And the truth is – some of those shoulds are probably true. But not all of them, not for everyone. And if you can’t tell me why you are doing it.. what the purpose of doing it is. Just stop doing it.
Because if you are doing something for the sake of doing it – what difference is it making? And if it isn’t leading you to your ‘goal’, is it serving a purpose? And if it isn’t – are you just doing ‘busy work’ or are you actually being productive?
To align more clearly in your purpose, ask yourself these questions :
- Is it pushing you towards your goal?
- Is it a priority for you?
- What is the desired outcome of this task?
Do you find yourself struggling to align in this, know how to do the things that need to be done – AND – how to know what those are?
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