The Problem With To-Do Lists (And Why It Feels Like You Never Do Enough)

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy mom, dog mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

How we doing? My friends? Welcome to the podcast. I’m so happy to be here with you today. I’m going to talk about how much I hate to do lists. Are you ready? I’m just going to riff on it. Before we dive into that, how you doing? I hope you’re doing well. If you could, would you please review this podcast? It would help me so much. I read all of the reviews. It makes a really big difference in my business in the reach that this podcast gets because podcasts grow solely, organically, and I know it takes a little bit of your time, but it really would go a long way for me.

And so I appreciate it in advance. And thank you for all of you who are continuously writing into me and DMing me and emailing me , and leaving the reviews and just letting me know how impactful this work has been. It fuels me. It is my love language. It keeps me going. We have this space inside the membership where members can write in wins and some members just continuously just update me there. And I love it because it really is a way for me to stay on top of all of the goodness that you all are doing. And I just, I really love it. What else is going on? There are so many transitions happening in my life in the best way, and I love that it’s also happening around the time of year that we often associate with transitions, kind of that back to school time.

But I just have to say that the biggest one kind of feels like my kids feeling like they’re older. I know, that might sound silly to someone who either doesn’t have kids or has kids a lot older. But for me right now, it feels very real that before I felt like I had two kids and an infant who I could just wear all of the time and who would just sleep when he slept and it felt like it was two kids and like this little itty bitty baby. And now it feels like I have three kids. Of course, Jack is still a baby, and of course he’s not walking yet. And yet he wants to do everything his brothers are doing. He is on the move in the sense that, you know, he’s not just going to stay on mom and be content and sleep on me.

He wants in on the action. And how that has, really transitioned into a change for me in my life is just navigating what it’s like to be with three kids and divide my attention and take care of them and show up with the energy and the attitude that I want to have. And I’m just so grateful for this work because I find myself using more of the get stronger type of work that I teach, versus sometimes in some seasons I’m using some of the, you know, slow down and get more grounded and, be more at peace. And different seasons call for different types of work. And that’s why I love coaching so much. I am an excellent coach. I’m not good at a lot of things. Trivia for one, it’s a topic for a different day, but coaching, I’m really excellent. And one thing that I can do really well is tell when someone needs like soft love versus hard love.

And you can kind of tell this yourself most of the time, not always, but a lot of the time. And by soft love and hard love, I just mean like, do you need to give yourself grace and be told to kind of take it easy and let some things go and slow down? Or is it time for you to really work on feeling more empowered, doing hard things and stepping into that next level version of you? And for me, it’s definitely that right now it’s, I can do hard things stepping into that next level version of myself. And it’s so interesting because over the last three-ish years that I’ve had kids, it’s kind of felt like I’ve been in more of the softer, grounded, slower energy. And I’ve mentioned this before, but I am so proud of it. And I’ll say it again here, that I really love my style and my take on this work because it embraces both.

A lot of experts will just talk about one or the other. It’s like, we’re going to hustle, we’re going to achieve, we’re going to go, go, go. Or we’re going to just be like mindful and present and slow. And I’ve really found a way to do both and I love that. And sometimes it’s both within the same day. Oftentimes though, more often than not, it’s just different seasons call for different types of, of growth and types of stepping into who you want to be. And so for me, it’s felt like over the last three years as I’ve had kids and my capacity was lower when I was pregnant and in newborn phases and all of that, it’s been really helpful for me to be more grounded and slower and present. And right now for me with what feels like three kids who are obviously still littles, but you know, out of any sort of like infant, I just wear you around and you’re like half a baby because, you really just do whatever I want you to do.

You’ll just sleep on me and I can take you wherever I go. It feels like now it’s okay, I have three kids. I want to step into being this like ambitious mom who is present with her kids, yes, but also is growing her business. And I don’t know, the energy has shifted for me and in part that happened on default, but then I was very quick for myself to just say, okay, is this the shift I want to happen or not? And I think that’s really important so you don’t feel like you’re at the effect of your life. And it is the shift that I want. I’m so excited. My business is growing, I love it. Private clients are growing. If you want to work with me privately, it’s momonpurpose.com/support. The membership is growing. That’s over at momonpurpose.com/coaching. And I love working with you all.

I love doing this work. So that’s a little bit about what’s going on with me. Like I said, I have other transitions going on in my life that I’ll be talking about as well, and it’s just a good time. I love a good transition. It challenges me mentally and emotionally and I think that is part of the purpose of life is to navigate these challenges and expand through them. Now let’s dive in to, to-do lists. The problem with, to-do lists and how much I dislike them and how I really want to encourage you to stop using them for a really good reason. So your to-do list seems like it’s helpful. It seems like it’s productive. You may even be someone who just loves crossing things off a list. And I can totally relate to being that person in my past, but it’s been so long that it’s like hard to remember.

But I definitely was someone who did that. I wasn’t born, you know, knowing how to calendar and how to create systems and time management planning and all of that. I learned it and I created my own systems and processes for this. And it’s just so life changing. Here’s why. Okay? Your brain cannot conceptualize the time that it takes each item to do on a to-do list. So when you look at a list, you literally see just a long list of things without anything being time bound. There’s no concept of time. And there’s this massive list. One of my clients had, I used to have like 10 lists of 10. So maybe you have multiple lists with multiple things on them. Your brain cannot make sense of the time with respect to that. So you know, your brain is going to think immediately that you are behind or, and/or that you don’t have enough time to do the things.

And it’s, it’s unspecific and vague in the sense of there’s no deadline, there’s no dates. You know, it’s not time bound at all. It’s just this massive list that immediately puts you into scarcity around time. Yes, you know it gives you a little hit of dopamine when you cross off something on your list, but that’s not worth the cost because it’s not like you ever complete your to-do list and it’s just done. You know, the reason that I’m able to have this episode is because the to-do list continues. It continues to grow. You just keep adding and adding and adding more things to your to-do list, even though along the way you might be crossing some things off. And not only does it put you into time scarcity, it’s kind of disorganized. Even if your to-do lists are very organized, you know, there’s still either one list with tons of things on them and or multiple lists with multiple things on them.

And it’s, it’s just not the most effective way to get things done from an abundant place. One of the telltale signs of your to-do list really negatively impacting your life is if at the end of the day you are constantly thinking about what you need to do next, and then maybe you reflect back on what you did already, but no matter what, it never feels like it was enough. So you’re spinning on what needs to get done in the future, kind of reflecting a little bit, knowing you did so much, but then also being conflicted because it sounds like in your mind I didn’t do enough. And the reason that you have that thought is because there’s still so much to do on your to-do list and it’s not really the things on your to-do list, it’s that they’re not time bound at all. They’re just listed there without any sense of time and your brain can’t make sense of that because it’s not spaced out in the way that a calendar presents with time.

So your to-do list creates time scarcity and this never ending list of shoulds that you do to yourself. So you’re shoulding on yourself, I should do more. I should be able to get things done quicker. I shouldn’t have to do so many things. I should have more help. Whatever your shoulds are with respect to your to-do list that is going to keep you shoulding on yourself, which is a cognitive distortion and really negatively impacts your wellbeing. The thing with to-do list is I think it’s such a low hanging fruit that it doesn’t even seem like it’ll make that big of a difference. And so I’m really dedicating an entire podcast episode to this because I want you to know that it will make a huge difference if you stop using a to-do list and instead start using a calendar. To-do lists seem productive. They seem helpful.

You even get a little dopamine hit when you cross things off your list, but they overall put you into time scarcity. They will kind of crush your mood specifically at the end of the day feeling like you didn’t do enough. And I think again, overall to do lists, make life and motherhood feel heavier. So instead of using a to-do list, I want you to take everything from that to-do list and put it on your calendar. You can use whatever calendar you want. I highly recommend a digital calendar so that you can have it with you wherever you go on your phone and or at home on your computer. I also love a digital calendar because you can move things around if you need to. It just keeps it really like clean and easy. I use Google Calendar, I love Google Calendar. You obviously have to have a Google account, like a Gmail account.

Most of the clients who I work with, I convince them to move to a Google calendar. However, my calendaring system is not one that is, Google Calendar specific. So you can use whatever calendar that you want, but I do really want to encourage you to switch to a digital calendar. The reason that this is going to be life changing is because you will know exactly when everything will get done. You will get more done and you will not have to worry about it. If I have things on a list, I have to worry about those things. I have to remember those things. I don’t want my brain being used to remember to-do list things. It’s such a waste of mental energy. So instead I put everything on my calendar and I put ’em in specific time slots to the extent that I can, but I also have a couple things each day I call it on a flex time list listed at the top of the calendar.

And when you do this once, it does take a little bit of upfront work. It’s kind of like setting up bills on auto pay. It’s like, yes, that takes a little bit of setup on your time, but then once it’s done, it saves you time. It’s like anything that you’re going to do a little bit more work upfront to set it up, but then it’s set it and forget it. The same is true with a to-do list. You’re going to have to take your list or lists for those of you who have multiple lists and put everything on your calendar and book way far out. I don’t have this issue anymore because I’ve scaled back and you know, I have three small little ones that I’m at home with now. But when I was like full-time working so many hours, I remember scheduling things so far out to make sure that I still had my white space and my self-care.

And so this is not an invitation to over schedule. The goal is not to schedule the most things in one day and see how much you can get done and feel exhausted. The goal is to be intentional with your time. It’s just like budgeting for money. A calendar tells you exactly what you’re going to do with your time. So my friend have at it schedule all of the self-care that you want, all of the white space that you want, all of the, you know, other things, right? Just put everything down. My point is that when it goes on to a calendar, you know exactly when it’s going to get done. And might there be some hiccups here and there where you have to move things? Sure. But once you get the hang of this, and it does take a little bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, life changing, life changing, you will get more done in less time.

And I think you know that that’s cool. It is cool to get more done in less time, but more important than that is you will stop feeling behind and you will start feeling really proud of what you’ve done. Like at the end of the day when my head hits the pillow, I am not thinking about what I need to do tomorrow. I am not thinking I’m so behind, I’m not thinking I’m never going to get things done. If any of those kind of thoughts pop into my mind, I just tell my brain, no, we’re not doing that. I’m using my time intentionally exactly how I want to be doing it. And that has taken intentionality because I work less than I used to. And that’s by design, that’s by choice. Could I grow my business faster and serve even more clients? Sure, but I want to be home with my kids.

And so I am growing my business, but I’m doing it second in priority to my family and my kids and that’s important to me. So if any thoughts pop up like this isn’t enough, I mean they really don’t anymore. I really want to emphasize that. But you do have to kind of redirect your brain in the beginning. It’s like no brain. Everything that I want to be doing in order of priority is on my calendar. Because when you set your purpose, when you set your priorities, for those of you who are in the membership, you must go take that class right now in the library. Purpose and Priorities. When you set your to-dos, when you, you know, set your calendar up to reflect your purpose and priorities, it really is just choosing what day you want to do what and moving things around to align with the life you want to create.

So very practically, if you need to register your daughter for a new gymnastics class, and that has to happen by Thursday and it’s Tuesday, you probably want to put that on the calendar for Wednesday. But for things that don’t have an external deadline, but still you want to get done, you’re going to move them out days out further. And that’s what I was going to say a second ago was when I was working so much, I did calendar in, you know, that white space, but also I would schedule things out a month or two later I’d be like, yes, I can be on that podcast in three months from now. And I had no problem saying that because I knew that it would still give me the boundaries around my work that I wanted. And to some extent I still do that now. It just looks different instead of needing to schedule so far out.

My biggest challenge that I work through really well now is just having more of a flex time list for the cracks. Meaning a lot of the things that I get done in a day that I want to do for myself or for my business will happen in time that is flexible. And what I mean by that is time that I am not going to specifically say I’m doing this at 2:00 PM for sure. I have my coaching calls and my, you know, private client calls and all of that that’s on there. And then I have things for the kids. Again, appointments, all the things, school, everything’s on there, you know, activities, the things that are for sure going to have a certain time. Those are all on the calendar. But for everything else, sometimes I’ll put, you know, specific times, but other times I just have a few items, like one to three things at the top of the day that I know I’m going to do in order of priority in the cracks.

And I don’t have a to-do list. It feels kind of crazy, like I need to prove this to you or something. I keep a list for groceries in my reminders app and my husband and I, share that like he’s invited to that. And so we make grocery lists together, which huge fan of if you live with your husband and you know, it’s just, it’s kind of great. I didn’t know you could do that for a while, but you can invite someone to a reminders list and that’s really fun. That’s the only list I keep. That is it my friend. So when I’m at the doctor’s office and we need to make a follow-up appointment for one of my kids, I pull out my Google calendar, I pull up the day and I add it. When I want to, you know, add anything to my calendar, it’s already set up so there’s no list.

So I just add it to where I have space. That’s what I was saying before is like in the beginning, you will need to spend some time taking all of your lists and putting it on your calendar and spacing it out correctly. However, once that’s done once and you actually follow your calendar, you won’t need to keep doing it. You’ll just add things to your calendar as they come up instead of adding it to a list. So, you know, recently we had, one of our smoke detectors kind of beeping like it needs a new battery or something like that. That is a perfect example of something that might ordinarily go on a to-do list and just make things worse because it’s going to present as when are we going to do that? There’s not enough time for that, right? Put it on the calendar, say, oh, “we’re going to go to Home Depot or my husband’s going to test it,” whatever.

Right? It, you get the idea where instead of putting that on a list, it’s going to go on, you know, Wednesday at six o’clock or something, he’s going to figure out the, smoke detector. Now if it’s something that doesn’t need to be on your calendar, don’t put it on your calendar. Like you probably don’t put put do laundry on your to-do list, so you don’t need to do it on your calendar. Anything that would go on your to-do list is what goes on your calendar. It’s basically doing the work of adding time constraints to what would otherwise just be in list form and you would never get to or you’re just, you know, perpetually feeling behind because there’s always more things being added. It, it makes such a difference and it’s such a small shift that I really want to emphasize how life changing it can be.

I was thinking about one of my beloved clients who’s been in the membership for years is very high achieving and a lawyer and runs a company. And she recently said to me in our private coaching, no to-do list has been life changing. It’s weird because I have always had a 10 page running list, but boy does everything get done now. And I don’t have that feeling of I will never be done with this. Isn’t that just amazing? Can you imagine that? Again, small shift, huge impact. If you are feeling behind, if you are using a to-do list, if things feel like they could be better, I really want to encourage you to drop your to-do list and give yourself a chance. It will require learning the new skill of calendaring. If you’re in the membership, my Better Time Management course is in there. You can access it at any time in the library and you can come get coaching from me anytime as well.

We have the written coaching forum in there 24 /7, and then there’s a weekly call that you can come live or listen to the replay on. And I think that it’s worth mentioning here that this is specific strategic advice. It’s not mindset work. Mindset work. I love to use for circumstances that we’re not able to change. For example, if you want coaching on your marriage, it’s going to be about how you show up, how you want to think and how you want to feel and how you want to act. Because we can’t change your husband if it’s for parenting and you are navigating tantrums. It’s going to be about how you show up because you can’t control your kids and there’s a lot that you can do and that’s real work. But with this, it’s different in so far as it’s not about accepting things how they are and then just changing the way you’re thinking about it.

Again, there’s a very real time for that, but this is not it. This is about changing the system and the type of planning you’re doing so that your brain isn’t constantly needing to be managed because it’s always in time scarcity, because you’re constantly looking at a to-do list. A really good analogy would be you could scroll social media all day and then manage your mind around it, and it would take a ton of mind management. Conversely, you could put boundaries around how often you get on social media and not have to do any of that mindset work in a very real way. You can say, okay, I’m only getting on social media at these times of day for this amount of time. That way you reduce how much mindset work is required. It’s the same thing with time management and a to-do list and calendaring.

You can still use a to-do list. It just takes so much mindset work to get out of that I’m running out of time, I don’t have enough time. Did I do enough type of mentality? When you’re using a to-do list, and again, the reason being because when your brain looks at a to-do list, it can’t conceptualize time. So what is enough? I don’t know. And yes, we can pull apart the word enough like what does that even mean? But in a very real way, you can just eliminate all of that by actually planning better, by using a calendar. Because I tell myself, I respond to my brain now. I did exactly what I was supposed to do on my calendar today. Way to go. I think about my purpose and my priorities and make sure that my calendar is in alignment with them. And I do that during daytime hours, oftentimes in the morning when my brain is fresh. This way, I don’t have any of those nighttime thoughts about I didn’t do enough, was this enough?

And running through all of the to-dos that didn’t get done or that need to get done tomorrow. It’s just none of that. It really takes care of a lot of the mindset work that would otherwise be needed. It would be like me telling you, okay, instead of managing our mind around all of the things that you see on social media that are negative, how about we just stop looking at social media for seven hours a day? Right? And you would probably say, yeah, I think that’s right. And that’s the same thing here. It’s like, let’s make it easy for you. Stop using a to-do list. Start using a calendar instead and oh my word my friend, I bet you it will be life changing if you want help with this. Implementing it calendaring, learning the skill that’s required to estimate time. All of that is in my Better Time Management course as well as accountability and coaching from me in my coaching containers. This is work worth doing, my friend. 10 outta 10. Recommend, say goodbye to your to-do list.

Thank you for being here and listening now,head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.