Monday Matters: How writing a Not to-do list can revolutionise your days

We’re all familiar with the concept of a ‘to-do’ list and have likely used them many times in a bid to make our day super productive. We’ve probably tried to make ourselves feel like we’re winning by adding a few things we’ve already finished or got started on so we can quickly tick them off. However, sometimes, we’ll have felt disheartened when we’re approaching bedtime and discover that most of our list needs migrating to tomorrow’s to-dos because we weren’t productive enough, have too much to do, or, we got distracted by other things.

Creating a ‘not to-do list’ can be a wonderful tool to help us identify and eliminate tasks, habits and distractions which prevent us from focusing on what really matters and stop us from being as productive as we would like to be. In a nutshell, a ‘Not to-do list’ is a list of activities you choose to avoid doing so that you can manage your time effectively. This might include things like the following:

• anything which distracts you on a regular basis
• things which drain your energy
• bad habits that you want to remove from your working time
• things which don’t currently add value to your life
• unnecessary tasks i.e. things which don’t need to be done
• other people’s responsibilities

Ideas for items to add to your not to-do list

Your Not to-do list should be highly personalised depending on your own wants and needs but here are some ideas to get you started.

• Checking your emails repeatedly throughout the day
• Mindlessly scrolling social media
• Checking your phone in bed – either last thing at night or before you get up
• Drinking coffee after 3pm (when you have work the next day)
• Going to bed later than 11pm (Sunday – Thursday)
• Spending time thinking about / stressing over things which are out of your control
• Reading negative news
• Things that are not my responsibility
• Doing tasks which would be best delegated to someone else
• Multi-tasking (or attempting to)
• Saying yes to tasks or events that aren’t a priority right now
• Working whilst eating lunch
• Spending time with individuals who drain your energy
• Forgetting to take regular work breaks
• Doing work after 5pm
• Procrastinating by watching lots of productivity videos (binge watching) on YouTube
• Keeping ideas, thoughts and must dos in your head instead of writing them down and scheduling time to deal with them
• Not identifying your top priorities for the day
• Eating unhealthy snacks which make you feel sluggish
• Making excuses to avoid / put off difficult tasks
• Aiming for perfection – forgetting that done is better than perfect
• Setting too many goals at once

Final words…

I hope you’ve found today’s post useful and it’s helped you to consider tasks, habits and distractions which prevent you from being as productive as you could be. I would really appreciate it if you took time out from your busy schedule to drop me a comment sharing your top three things to add to your ‘Not to-do list’.