“Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning”

I kinda feel like the car is moving so fast I can’t control the steering as much as I’d like to. Yeah, the “busy-o-meter” is reading reddish this week. All great stuff, and all harvesting seeds I’ve planted … however …

When I stumbled across this article this morning, it really resonated. Peter Bergman talks about “Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning” in the HBR Blog Network. It’s too obvious, but a much needed reminder. Check out the 2 lists below. Gotta run – need to strike some things off the list for the rest of this beautiful-pinch-me-it-feels-like-I’m-in-California day!!!

List 1: Your Focus List (the road ahead)What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What’s important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can’t work 25/8.

List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)

To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn’t make you happy? What’s not important to you? What gets in the way?

Who’s Managing the To-Do List? Me or ‘it’?

Just because you officially leave the corporate world doesn’t mean that decades of behavior patterns change overnight. Even the things that are burs under your saddle. The irritations you fantasize about leaving behind if you could just get out of there. If I didn’t like the pressure of a full schedule and mindless to-dos, why do I continue to plan my days this way? People ask me if I’m bored yet. Are you kidding?! I’ve got enough things to do, to fill many lifetimes, and anyone else’s time, if they will let me. Just ask my husband if you doubt this truth.

If you are still sitting at that desk in that place reading this, you will swear this will not happen to you. If you know me, you would have predicted that I would continue in this frantically scheduled and busy mode. No surprise to anyone. Completely ridiculous, but no surprise.

So “what’s up with this?” I’m definitely still living in the “I DO, therefore I AM” camp. After decades of annual performance evaluations and forced ranking in a Fortune 1 company, my sense of forward motion and worth is inextricably hard-wired to my to-do list. I still am waking up with self-talk of “I don’t have enough time to ……”, re-prioritizing the to-do list and calendar engagements and going to sleep with thoughts of “I didn’t do enough …., get enough …..”.  Again, if you know me, …. Completely ridiculous, but no surprise.

My friend KH keeps telling me (and thanks for the reminder again early this morning) “OMG, just relax!” As we say in the world of Change Management, change happens in an instant, but transition happens over a period of time. When you get married, you instantly become a spouse, but it takes some of us a long time to fully transition into married life. After the honeymoon, there is often some adjustment and negotiating of new behavior patterns. Same is true for retirement.

I don’t ever want to give up that energy and drive that allows me to accomplish things that I set out to do. I’m just seeking ways to integrate that in a way that feels more free and easy. Let’s take to-do list management down a notch. Or reverse the roles – I manage “it” instead of “it” managing me. Could I even give it up? Just writing that question makes my heart skip a beat right now. All in due course.

I’m starting with this creed for now “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough“. I picked this up from Brene Brown  in her book  “The Gifts of Imperfection – Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life“. (aka, I won’t have to account for this in any future performance review cycle …. yeah!!)  Sometime days I can warm to it, on others I still dismiss it as not acceptable.

Yours In-Transition. Peace Out for today. Off to lunch with an old friend to obsess further over this topic!

Now or Never

When you take away the long list of work must-dos, and then you take away the daily life maintenance to-dos, what are you left with? For me it is a long list of projects I ran out of steam and time to complete, as well as some ideas saved up for ‘post retirement’.

This list is ridiculous. It has too many things that would feel good to have in my rear view mirror, but truthfully, would exhaust me or bore me to death if I actually tried to tackle them all. You know the stuff I’m talking about. Like clearing out the garage. Thankfully, the recent mosquito infestation has made the garage off-limits for now. And besides, none of these are yet the life-inspiring ‘sparkle me up’ pursuits I’m seeking to draw out of my soul.

With some inspiration from a book I would highly recommend, “Who Are You and What Do You Want”, I came up with a plan of attack:

1. Set a time frame  –> now until end of January – Easy!
2. Put a star next to those that are now-or-never, i.e. if you postpone til after the time frame the window of opportunity will close – Also pretty easy.
3. Determine your commitment level High / Medium / Low – hmmm, very revealing. No wonder I’ve never made it to that 7am Women’s Bible Study.
   
4. Calendarize the 1st Step for all now-or-never High commitment – Easy again. I definitely know how to add to-do’s to my calendar!
   

Now I can get to work on some of these …..