Peace of Mind Organizing

Facing down my to-do list

5 December 2011

I’m just returning from a five-day trip to visit my parents. (I’m blogging from 30,000 feet in the air!) I realized as I was getting into the mindset of getting back to real life that I was afraid to look at (or even open) my to-do list.

That, my friends, is a very bad thing. If you’re afraid to look at your to-do list than you’re not going to be very productive. I actually thought about abandoning it and starting a new one.

But I faced down my fear. I realize it was a pretty mild fear, as these things go. But it reminded me of an adage that I have to tell myself on occasion, which is that the truth is the truth whether or not you know about it. It doesn’t do you any good to not look at your financial data for fear of what you’ll find, or not ask somebody an important question, for fear of what they’ll tell you. The truth is the truth.

The same goes for my to-do list. I know that I was afraid that there were going to be things on it that I had completely forgotten to do. And there was one thing. But mostly I found I was able to cross a lot of stuff off, because I had accomplished it.

Right now, I’m in a bit of a quandary about how to keep track of my tasks. I’d been using Mark Forster’s various methods. But he’s in the process of developing a new one and somehow the knowledge of that made me feel disenchanted with my current use of his Autofocus system. I’m a bit fickle that way.

So as I explore new options (the latest one is Kanbanery), I’ll post here what I find. Thankfully, December should be a little less hectic than October and November were, so I feel I’ll have time to do a little more than keep my head above water.

And the first step was facing down my to-do list a couple of hours ago.

Tagged with: mark forster, personal kanban, time management, to-do list

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