RULE TO BREAK

“There aren’t enough hours in the day”

Some days you’re just always in a rush and running to catch up with yourself. Maybe it seems like that’s most days for you. There’s always so much to do, so many meetings, phone calls, piles of laundry, emails, classes, social activities, whatever your days are generally filled with. By the time you sit down in the evening – if you even get to do that – you’re exhausted. What’s more, you probably feel frustrated and dissatisfied that you still have a long list of things to carry over to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? So what can you do about it? Well, actually, quite a lot. The key is to start the day with a shorter list. That way you can work steadily but without any sense of rush or stress, and get it all done. Of course there will be the odd day when the car breaks down, or a big client places a panic order, but if your workload is manageable you’ll be able to catch up within a day or two when that happens.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s all very well, but the list of things you have to do is just too long, and obviously you’d shorten it if you could, but you just can’t. But hang on, you’re going to get to the end of the day with some of those things not ticked off your list, aren’t you? That’s what we’re talking about. I’m just saying that if they’re not going to be crossed off at the end of the day, don’t have them on the list at the beginning of the day. Putting them there and then not doing them isn’t helping anyone. If you only have a ‘to do’ list that you can actually complete, you’ll feel satisfied and pleased with yourself at the end of the day, instead of feeling frustrated. And meanwhile you’ll have achieved exactly the same amount.

So what to leave off? Well, that’s easy. You leave off all the things that you’re going to push aside when the crunch comes – the ones you won’t have ticked off by this evening. Come on, you know which ones those are. The only effect of having those on your list is to make you feel stressed, guilty, worried and miserable at the end of the day when you haven’t done them.

Of course, there is another effect of leaving these things off your list each day. It will mean that you stop being a rushed, mildly manic person telling everyone how busy you are, and you turn into an efficient and in-control person who knows how to relax at the end of the day.