Hello Love, 

You know that constant voice in your head that nags at you to do all the items you keep forgetting to do? Yeah, me too, and I hate that voice! It comes at the worst time. Usually, it comes when I am trying to relax: shower time, bedtime, cuddley time with my husband, you know… Just when I’m trying to be present and release the tension of my day to day workload, my mind wants to run through every possible “remember this later” thought I had in the past week. How unrelaxing is that!? Well, this post is about how to NEVER worry about your to-do list again! 

I love having order and peace in my life. And I organize things, a lot. So in my effort to figure out how to control this stressful, reoccurring frustration of my to-do list taking over my relaxation time, I found a really effective approach to turning off the stress of my to-do list looming overhead and now I never worry about if I’m “missing something” or “forgetting to do something.”

The answer? I now assign a time to every single one of my to-do list items as soon as I realize it’s something I need to do, but can’t do right now. I do this by putting all of my to-do items right into my calendar on my phone and setting a reminder notification for them. This eliminates the constant guilt of seeing items on my mental or pen and paper to-do list that I could be getting done, but instead am choosing to sit and pet my dog, or paint my nails.

Let me give you an example: You remember that you’re running low and toilet paper after JUST going to Costco last weekend, ugh. So, you know that means you’ve got to either make a quick trip to a store for some TP!

Now, if when you realize this needs to be done, you can’t go immediately to the store to get that errand taken care of, you will likely do one of three things:
1) keep this in your mental to-do list… this option has the least likelihood that you’ll get your TP before you’re having to scrounge for anything in the bathroom that will suffice (I know we’ve all been there… Yuck.)
2) write it down on your to-do list and ruminate over all of the guilt you feel every time you see it on there because you’re not doing this important task, don’t know when you will, and know you might end up reeeaaalll frustrated at yourself when that last sheet is pulled off the roll and YOU are the one stuck on the toilet
3) or, you can write it down on your calendar and assign the task to a specific time that you know you can make happen, therefore eliminating it from your mental to-do list until it’s time to do that task and you are ready to address it!

So then when you are reminded of an item that’s on your to-do list, you won’t be faced with that “oh crap” thought about when or if you’ll get it taken care of in time because you will already know that you have a plan to get it taken care of! Now-a-days, when I am sitting down to watch an episode of Parenthood or Gilmore Girls (yes, I am rewatching this series for the 15th time) and I remember the doctor’s appointment I need to schedule, I can easily put that worry out of my mind because I know that I already have time set to do it tomorrow on my lunch break.

The final tip to make this approach work, and it can be a tough one, is to actually DO the thing you scheduled to do when the time comes. If the task will be no easier the longer you wait, motivate yourself to get it done when the time comes by reminding yourself that the sooner it’s over, the sooner it’s OVER!

So, in summary – Take the drama out of your to-do list by scheduling each item for a specific time and doing it when it’s time to and not worrying about it when it’s not. 

Question – do you have a favorite calendaring system? I use my iCal app on my iPhone – what do you use?

Jenesis Rose