201: Dump Your To-Do List: How to Really Plan for Success

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. I still haven't gotten used to saying that. I'm going to be honest. I still sometimes say Time to Level Up, but it is the She Thinks Big! Podcast.

Now we have the audiobook to go with She Thinks Big paperback and hardback. If you have not gotten your hands on the audiobook or your ears on the audiobook, go over to Spotify, Audible, wherever you listen to audiobooks, even your library, you can get at your library.

Did you realize you have to pay extra to have it in library circulation? So interesting. But it's there. Get yourselves an Audible or an audio version of She Thinks Big and then also get your hands on a workbook.

Those you can buy on Amazon because one of the bonuses that go along with the audiobook is an audio guide to the workbook. Get your audiobook and then go over to andrealiebross.com/books and click on “Give me the bonuses” and you're going to get an audio guide to the workbook which is awesome.

I'm throwing that in here because you obviously like listening to things if you're listening to this podcast. Okay, this kind of can segue into the topic for today, which is dumping your to-do list.

You should not be putting “buy audiobook” on your to-do list. It should just be something that you believe that you should be a bigger thinker. If you believe you should be a bigger thinker, then you should automatically know to go get the audiobook.

But anyway, I'm going a little too deep too fast. Here's what we're going to talk about today. What if I told you that the days of having that never-ending to-do list are ending?

I'm going to tell you really the problems with to-do lists. Then I'm going to encourage you to do two things. But before we get started, I want you to pause the episode. I want you to message me on Instagram.

So pause the episode, go to Instagram, find my Instagram page, @andrea.liebross.coaching, and message me with a number of how many things are on your to-do list right now. I'm going to take a poll, I want to know.

Pause the episode, go do that, and come back. Here we go. Now I want to know, are you someone that even writes down things on a to-do list just so you can cross them off and get a little dopamine hit?

I used to do that. I don't do it anymore, but I know a lot of you out there even do that. I know this because I hear my client saying it. But why I'm really recording this episode is because I hear a lot of prospective clients telling me that their days feel like this endless battle of them or you versus the never-ending to-do list.

It's like, “Who's going to win in the end?” Even if you are crossing things off the to-do list, you're still kind of wondering what you actually did. Because this list, although it's supposed to help you and it's supposed to help you make it easier, somehow you end the day feeling like you haven't won.

You know that phrase, like, “Go win your day”? You end up thinking you haven't won your day. Because really, no matter how hard you try, you really cannot do “all the things.”

I know this because I have been in your shoes and you can also go check out all the episodes that I've done around this topic. I've recorded a whole bunch around using your Full Focus Planner.

I had a conversation with my clients, Cynde and Sarah, about it. There's an episode with Stacie Simpson, where we talk a little bit about work-life balance and it comes in there. But today I really wanted to dive deep into why this to-do list just does not work, and why I think you should really throw it out the window for real.

Now, if that statement “throwing your to-do list out the window,” if that makes you feel like you're going to vomit or gasp for air or tell me you wouldn't know what to do without it, I want you to know that we're just going to replace the list and have a similar system of checks and balances to make sure things happen.

I'm not saying you don't need things to help you remember, you don't need things to help you not lose track of things. But there's a better way, there's a better way to do it. There's a way that actually allows you to be productive, but also enjoy life and your family and even some alone time.

It allows you to do that work-life integration that I talked about in my episode with Stacie Simpson that we recorded at She Thinks Big Live in January of 2024. But first, you've got to understand why you're throwing out the list. I'm going to give you a couple of reasons.

Here is what I would call problem number one with to-do lists. You're not writing your list with any sort of priorities in mind. I'm not even talking about priorities for the day, I'm talking about priorities for life.

As your brain sort of scans all the things that you could be doing, it tells you that you have to get all of this done today. A lot of the women I work with, they start their day with dumping down a daily list of things that they want to get done.

They drink their coffee and they do this or after their kids get off to school, they pause and have their at the countertop and they write everything down. Then at that moment, anything and everything really is coming to mind for no rhyme or reason.

But when they look back on their list, then they start to feel overwhelmed, and they start to ask themselves, “How could I possibly do all of this in one day?” So, the truth of the matter is you can't do it all in one day.

This brain dump to-do list type of thing, which is different than a brain dump thought download—there's an episode about that, thought downloads—this is not a thought download, this is truly just a brain dump of all the things you have to do, it doesn't work because it is not written with any sort of priorities in mind.

Now, which brings us to number two, if we don't have clear priorities, what you're asking your brain to do is to make 50 million gazillion decisions each day and spend a lot of energy in the process trying to decide what to do next.

The more choices you have, the more exhausting it gets. When you're operating from really an unorganized to-do list, you're in a constant state of decision fatigue. In your business, this decision fatigue leads to business lag. There are episodes on those two things.

Just because when you cross something off your list, you're going to have to go back and make another decision as to what's next. So see how, if you cross something off, you go back, what's next, cross something off, you go back, what's next, this is just exhausting in and of itself.

All right, which brings me to the third reason why we should throw the to-do list out the window. They're unrealistic. You're totally setting yourself up to fail. This is why when I create annual goals or quarterly goals, I say three to seven things. I don't say a hundred, and your lists are way more than three to seven. I know. I know that.

So what happens when you have leftover tasks? Guess what? They go on tomorrow's list. Then the leftover tasks, “Tomorrow, go on tomorrow's list.” Sometimes on Friday, you still have something on your list that was there on Monday.

Because when was the last time you felt like you got everything done on your list? I'm going to go with never. That means that you go to bed every night feeling like a failure. At the end of the day, your to-do list is never, ever complete.

Notice, this having the priorities is key, my friends. What I mean by that, what are big things that you're working towards? What are the big things that you're working towards? What do you need to do in order to make those big things happen?

Because I am guessing all those other little teeny, weeny things in the to-do list, they're going to happen no matter what. You're going to find five seconds to get them done.

The real big problem, the fourth really big problem with to-do lists is that they don't include those big huge projects that you want to be working on that are probably going to take days and weeks and months.

We don't make the list, they don't make the list because they're so big. Even their size also really probably means that they're very important to us because they're big. We don't include some of these big things on the to-do list. We don't even include parts of them.

One way to tackle that is to break these big projects down into pieces. I use a tool called the Eisenhower Matrix. You can access that tool at andrealiebross.com/toolkit. It's free. I give you a whole long explanation of how to even use the Eisenhower Matrix, but that is a way that you can break down these big huge priorities into things that could be on a daily to-do list.

Now, this process of even identifying these big projects, that's something that has to come when you take a strategic pause, when you reflect, which is really sometimes what happens when we do a Vision Into Action Intensive. You're buying yourself some space to reflect and think about what these big projects are.

Then you can use a tool like the Eisenhower Matrix to help you break them down into pieces. Then your to-do list can actually include things that are going to, I'm going to call it move the needle.

I'll tell you a funny story, at the end of our building our house project, the superintendent on the project who honestly was let go right as our project ended, he had to give to the owner of the company, the builder, a list of all the outstanding things like the punch list as they call it, and what we came to realize weeks later was that he included the little teeny things on the punch list, like the real things that could be punched out but not the bigger things that were totally missing from our house, like there were no window treatments on, the TVs haven't been mounted.

What else was there? The whole landscaping wasn't done. So the punch list didn't include those things so the owner of the company thought our house was completely done and it wasn't even close because that list did not include these bigger projects.

Number one is you've got to figure out what your priorities are. Number two, if you're going to dump this to-do list, so to speak, you've got to embrace the habit of planning. Minimal, minimally, you've got to plan your week. Now you get bonus points if you do it quarterly or even annually, which is what we do inside Vision Into Action Intensive, which is super powerful.

But when you sit down to create that thoughtful weekly plan, and you're looking at an honest assessment of the amount of time that you have each day that week, instead of looking at that big gigantic list multiple times a day, every single day, you are going to work on just the most important tasks and you're going to ask yourself, "When do I honestly have time to tackle this? Is it Wednesday? Is it Thursday? Maybe it's not this week."

Guess what? You might only do two things on Monday, but with fewer choices for each day, you've removed that decision fatigue factor and you're ensuring that really those most important things get done, which is why I really of this Full Focus system, which now, my friends, is included even in my Think Big Coaching package, which is my kind of entry-level coaching package.

Each month you're going to get a whole hour working on this type of thing with a coach. I really think you should ditch this daily to-do list and instead shift into creating a list of priorities and then an intentional weekly or hopefully quarterly plan.

I know you can do it. There's a ton of strategy and guidance in how to do it. I do give you all of that inside the Think Big Coaching container as well as all of my other coaching containers.

If you even can get to that place of doing this intentional weekly plan, understanding where your priorities are, you're going to see a difference. But I want to leave you with one last thing. You're going to see a huge difference in your “to-do list” or lack thereof or you're thinking around what you need to do if you can just trade out this to-do list for a to-believe list.

If you know what you believe, if you want to believe, what future you is encouraging you to believe, such as “I can become a big thinker,” you are going to be able to trade out that to-do list for your to-believe list. Because if you are believing that you can become a big thinker, then you're going to know what the next step might be, which might be to go buy the audiobook.

But let me give you a better example. If you believe that you can serve ginormous billion-dollar tech companies, then you're going to get to work on preparing to serve them. You're not going to freak out and wonder if you're too small.

If you believe that you can have just as much work in the winter months as you do in the summer months, if you're a residential painting company, then you're going to get to work on figuring out how to do that. You're going to start becoming a problem solver. You're going to use some intentional thought creation, which is so important. I encourage you to trade out your to-do list for a to-believe list. Listen to the episode on belief from She Thinks Big Live, and that might help you get there.

Okay, my friends, that's what I've got for you today. No more to-do list. Understand your priorities. Plan at least your week, hopefully your quarter and year, and start considering “What do I believe about myself? What do I believe what's possible?” Because that is going to be the list you want to be holding on to. That is the list you want to be working on every morning, not the to-do list.

All right, until next time, keep thinking big. Keep accessing that future you, keep asking future you what you need to be doing. It's going to get you so far in your business and in life. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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