More Than WE Know

Come on - be honest - aren’t there some items on your list that you just keep moving from one day to the next?

You know you should be doing them, so you diligently add them to the next day’s list.  But if you were honest with yourself you’d admit you weren’t going to do them tomorrow anymore than you did them today.

This weekend, I took a look at my “carry over list” to see if I could find any pattern that would help me understand why I never did these items, and yet, never erased them from my list either.

If you read this blog regularly you know that I do a lot of different things - corporate career, small business, doctoral studies, travel, etc.  Most things I have no trouble doing, while others just seem to linger at the bottom of my list - until they become unavoidable crises that I have to manage.

Here’s the list I’ve been carrying over for a couple of weeks:  

• call maintenance to investigate the mysterious line of small brown spots on the ceiling in the kitchen (leak from upstairs apartment?)
• call salon to make appt. for a haircut
• call Dr to arrange a bone density test
• submit paperwork for recertification of my Project Management Credentials
• submit paperwork of final portfolio for my coaching certification
• obtain absentee voter form (I’ll be traveling on my state’s primary day)
• update my passport
• add my new blog to topline community forum

These are all obviously important, which is why I can’t just remove them from my list. So why aren’t I doing them?

When I looked more closely at the list, I could see that the common theme was that I had to deal with some form of bureaucracy in order to accomplish the task. 

I really dislike bureaucracy.  Not that anyone Likes it. But I Dread it. I am always sure it is going to be a nightmare to deal with receptionists, clerks, policies and procedures.

Even something as simple as talking to the receptionist at the beauty salon seems to defeat me - I assume that I am not going to be able to find a time to fit in with my schedule, etc.  The irony is that I then wait until my hair is so out of control that I am desparate and take whatever they have, totally disrupting my schedule.

The same with the rest of these items. They all have deadlines which will soon become imminent and I will be forced to deal with them. Why not deal with them now before they become a crisis?

So, this week, I am going to face my gremlins - and deal with bureaucracy.  I’m going to concentrate on getting these items off of my to do list for good. 

Next week I’ll report back to you how I did. 

If I didn’t take care of at least 4 of the 7 items, I will do an extra mile on the eliptical machine at the gym. (since I only recently started going back to the gym - this is more grueling than it sounds!!)

If I do get 4 of them taken care of, besides the great feeling of having them off my list, I’ll treat myself to a new novel, just for fun!

So, how about you?

What’s lingering on your to-do list? What can you learn about yourself by looking at the activities you most avoid? 

What can you get done by next week and how will you reward/challenge yourself to get it done?  

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