So many things to do, so little time…
⚖ The pros and cons of to-do lists
To-do lists can be a source of stress or even burnout. If you misuse them, you can feel that you’re constantly running behind on everything in your life. These are the main disadvantages of to-do lists:
When something isn’t done at the end of the day, we feel failed.
Sometimes even small, almost effortless tasks can stay on a to-do list for weeks. We put something on there and then roll it over, one day to the next until it’s haunting you for weeks.
An overly long to-do list may lead to analysis paralysis and eventually us not taking action because of the feeling of being overwhelmed.
We always seem to think of ourselves as superhuman in the future and often add an unrealistic amount of tasks to the list.
On the other hand, to-do lists are essential. You cannot be productive in a consistent way without having a to-do list. If you don’t have a physical or digital to-do list, you are automatically creating a mental one.
As David Allen, productivity guru and author of Getting Things Done said:
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them
You’re literally wasting brain space by trying to remember everything, leaving no space for creativity and innovative ideas.
And let’s not forget the awesome feeling when we can tick off an item on our to-do list. It releases a mini shot of dopamine and remembers us to focus on success and progress.
🚀 How to create a better system and turn it to your advantage
Think about the most important thing, the one thing you have to do today. The daily highlight is a productivity technique from the book Make Time by John Zeratsky and Jake Knapp. Rather than listing up too many tasks, the idea is to focus on a single task that we have to do today.
Ali Abdaal, a productivity Youtuber swears by a might-do list in combination with one daily highlight. By doing this, you can still list up multiple tasks which you can do after your daily highlight is done, but it takes off the mental pressure of having to finish the whole list.
You need to make a clear difference between the tasks we want to do today and the tasks we need to do someday and don’t want to forget. That’s why we need a running to-do list. You could do it on paper, but that’s probably not the easiest solution in the long run. I personally use Ticktick, which is a great free app available on your phone and browser. Some other good alternatives are Todoist or Remember The Milk. The most effective way to use those online lists is to
Add everything throughout the day to the main inbox. Later, find some blocks of time to
Organise it: add tags and/or use a list to divide personal stuff, ideas & projects
Prioritize it: add deadlines, high or low priority
Cover everything: aim for 100% coverage of your things to do. Otherwise, you always will be stressed by thinking about what you cannot forget.
It has to interact with your other productivity systems such as your calendar and e-mail. That would be too much info for this newsletter, but drop me a comment or dm if you want me to elaborate on that at a later moment.
😍 My Favorite Things of last week
🎥 Video: Helan - invisible pain visualised by AI: Helan, the health & wellbeing organisation I work for, launched a new campaign on mental health. They used AI to make a visual of the invisible pain of 3 people. One of them reacted “It’s like this computer understands my daily struggles more than most people“. (NL)
🎥 Video: Jim Carrey's Speech NO ONE Wants To Hear: One of my friends sent me this video of Jim Carrey as a reply to last week’s newsletter. I listened to it multiple times. These quotes stuck the most:
Most of us make a conservative choice and choose a safe job. So many choose our path out of ‘fear disguised as practicality’.
"Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you've been trying to play."
We have to take the risk of being seen in all of your glory
The video ends with his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. Most of the audience is laughing and either ignoring or not realizing that he's revealing the most broken part of himself.
🎙 Podcast: Radar by Nexxworks: Super interesting podcast on tech and innovation all over the world. One of the main takeaways of the October radar for me was that Microsoft published a report named ‘the productivity paranoia’. They came to the conclusion that overall productivity in companies increased since the shift to working from home.
🗨 Quote of the week
You can’t control what happens to you, but you can choose how you view it.
✏Visual of the week
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