The Practical: How to Get Out of Your Own Way

Is Your To-Do List Just an I-Wish List?

First in a series of practical ideas for creating the life you've always dreamed of.

How many tasks did you get to cross off your to-do list yesterday? How many were left undone and have now crowded onto today’s list? (That darn thing gets longer and longer as the week goes on, doesn’t it?)

I’ll bet you found it much easier to tell me what you did NOT do than to tell me what you DID. High-achieving people are usually their harshest critics, so we tend to think more about our failures than our successes. Before I rerouted my life, I was constantly beating myself up about the two things I failed to achieve instead of celebrating the eight that I nailed.

After I rerouted, I started getting a lot more done when I shortened my to-do list and focused on my accomplishments instead of my failures.

The trouble with many to-do lists is that they’re aspirational, not strategic. They’re a list of what you hope to do, not what you will do. And since you can physically only complete a fraction of that long, daunting list, they often turn into a guilt List.

Consider this: If you accomplish five of five tasks, that’s a 100 percent success rate compared to 50 percent if you finish five of ten. And you haven’t done any more work.

After you cut back your list to a manageable and realistic size, pay attention to how it makes you feel.

In control. Confident. Successful.

Put these tasks on your to-do list:

Set your intention – Pay attention – Live without tension.

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Next week: Keeping It Simple

Helping You Design Your Life’s Roadmap

Heather D. Mahoney is a Certified Life Coach and Certified Passion Test Facilitator. Once stuck in life with no clear idea of where she wanted to go, she rerouted and changed direction. To help others who’ve reached a similar dead end, she created Designing Your Life’s Roadmap: 8 Pathways to Guide Your Exit from the Pretender Highway (available on Amazon) . To start rerouting your life, follow her on Facebook and visit her website, roadmapheather.com .