Give Yourself a Break and Add it to the List

Does your to-do pile look like this?

I am a big list person. I love lists; so much so that I wrote an entire chapter in my new book about creating successful lists and strategies to use lists to boost your confidence. Writing a "to-do" list and checking things off is a visual and tangible way to record moving forward progress.

I am going to add things to this list
as I accomplish them

I especially love those days when I have a full page of things to do and I can just check them all off, I get such a rush of accomplishment when I can see what I actually got done during a day. However, I have been spending a lot of time lately focusing on the final editing and formatting of my upcoming book and so the daily to do list has consisted of only one thing; “publish the book” and because that process is much longer than one day, I have not been able to check it off leaving me with several weeks of daily lists left unchecked. This is not a set-up for success, so today I am going to test a new list and see how it works – while I am testing it I would also love to get feedback from you about how it worked for you – so let’s try this together…

Did I mention that I have been consumed by one thing for weeks now? And yet, as an engaged and active professional I have had more than one item, one project, one assignment land on my desk in the last month and I have been doing my best air-traffic controlling to deal with urgent matters and park most everything else into the overflow lot. And now the pile-up, literally, in my overflow lot is crashing down around me so I am going to get it done today. But if I were to sit down and make a list of all of the things in the pile I have to get done, it would take all day so I am going to try a different strategy. A backwards list.

One thing done!

I am going to start at the top of the pile and get one thing done each hour. As I accomplish, finish, or process each thing, I am going to write it down on my backwards list. Today I am going to get at least 12 things done from the pile – I think this is going to work, in fact, I think it is going to be a lot of fun! First thing accomplished…write a post for my blog. Check…only 11 more things to do today…what’s next?

Give yourself a gift today and add something to the list.

My book 100 Days of Giving is about these kinds of gifts exactly, sharing our gifts with others and ourselves so that we can be creative and intentional in giving. If you found this exercise to be helpful - I would love to hear about it and I know my readers would love it too - so please post your experiences and I will post them so that others can continue giving, one simple gift at a time.

100 Days of Giving is available as an e-book you can purchase it for $2.99 at Smashwords: 100 Days of Giving e-book at Smashwords or for your Kindle at 100 Days of Giving e-book at Amazon and get all of the daily experiences, journaling exercises and stories.

Kathy Stutzman is a creative connector, writer , consultant, and all around cockeyed optimist. For more about Kathy Stutzman go to: @KathyStutzman, www.KathyStutzman.blogspot.com www.onehundreddaysofgiving.blogspot.com or contact her at kastutzm@smig.net.