“To Do” lists are for losers. Try this instead.
So now that you are on track to become an early riser, the question is what do you do with your time. You might think to write down a bunch of things you want done. So at first it seems that “to do” lists are a good way of having a list of things available to remind yourself things you thought of to do in one mental state when you are in another. So what’s the problem?
Let’s say you’re really feeling ambitious and so you write down 20 things “to do” and then the next morning one thing ends up taking 10 times longer than you thought, you still finish it and maybe a couple other things but you cross out some things on your list and what do you see as you finally finish for the day? All that you DIDNT do.
Over time that is not reinforcing of productive behavior. It gets your mind to focus on what isn’t done, rather than what is.
So a “Falcon” (My nickname for those who consider themselves productivity Falcons who follow certain methods to massively boost their odds of success and productivity) will build systems not goals and they will either create an “agile list” (including tasks To do, done and in progress) or create a “done” list instead. Using a “To Do” list is okay if it’s visually less appealing such as using a gray pencil for the “to do list” on a bland sheet of paper, but a done list needs to leave you excited and feeling good About what you accomplished to reinforce the dopamine hit that will make you literally a tiny bit addicted to coming back to that feeling... You may even let the “done” list accumulate over time and at the end of the week put it in a folder and at the end of the month paperclip a month worth of tasks you’ve done together so that any time you don’t feeel as productive as you could, you can take a quick glance and see that you are way ahead of where you started at least in terms of effort and progress measured by doing what you intended. Tasks completed may become obsolete which leads me to systems.
The “Done” list should look like something you are proud of and you should feel good everytime you look at it. Using visual aides to highlight what you have accomplished is great. Maybe you want to type it out and use rubber glue and use a different color sheet of paper with construction paper cut out to emphasize every thing you accomplished uniquely. If you are an artist you may even decide to make each task done a part of a collage of art or make a drawings at the end of each completion.
Somehow, you’ve got to make sure that whatever system you have gets you more excited at the end of the day and proud of what you accomplished or else you aren’t creating the incentive structure that promotes productivity but you actually were doing the opposite. But you can really desire to be productive by creating the right patterns. Now the past of who you once were all changes. From this day forward you begin doing better and smarter things on your golden brick road towards success.
If you’d like, you can pre print and cut all your “to do” list goals into rectangles and prepare colored sheets of construction paper a size that provides a border around the goals once completed and get a little glue stick to build your done list.
A Falcon always tries to get the psychology right so that success will follow as automatically as possible—as you can probably imagine.
Let’s say you’re really feeling ambitious and so you write down 20 things “to do” and then the next morning one thing ends up taking 10 times longer than you thought, you still finish it and maybe a couple other things but you cross out some things on your list and what do you see as you finally finish for the day? All that you DIDNT do.
Over time that is not reinforcing of productive behavior. It gets your mind to focus on what isn’t done, rather than what is.
So a “Falcon” (My nickname for those who consider themselves productivity Falcons who follow certain methods to massively boost their odds of success and productivity) will build systems not goals and they will either create an “agile list” (including tasks To do, done and in progress) or create a “done” list instead. Using a “To Do” list is okay if it’s visually less appealing such as using a gray pencil for the “to do list” on a bland sheet of paper, but a done list needs to leave you excited and feeling good About what you accomplished to reinforce the dopamine hit that will make you literally a tiny bit addicted to coming back to that feeling... You may even let the “done” list accumulate over time and at the end of the week put it in a folder and at the end of the month paperclip a month worth of tasks you’ve done together so that any time you don’t feeel as productive as you could, you can take a quick glance and see that you are way ahead of where you started at least in terms of effort and progress measured by doing what you intended. Tasks completed may become obsolete which leads me to systems.
The “Done” list should look like something you are proud of and you should feel good everytime you look at it. Using visual aides to highlight what you have accomplished is great. Maybe you want to type it out and use rubber glue and use a different color sheet of paper with construction paper cut out to emphasize every thing you accomplished uniquely. If you are an artist you may even decide to make each task done a part of a collage of art or make a drawings at the end of each completion.
Somehow, you’ve got to make sure that whatever system you have gets you more excited at the end of the day and proud of what you accomplished or else you aren’t creating the incentive structure that promotes productivity but you actually were doing the opposite. But you can really desire to be productive by creating the right patterns. Now the past of who you once were all changes. From this day forward you begin doing better and smarter things on your golden brick road towards success.
If you’d like, you can pre print and cut all your “to do” list goals into rectangles and prepare colored sheets of construction paper a size that provides a border around the goals once completed and get a little glue stick to build your done list.
A Falcon always tries to get the psychology right so that success will follow as automatically as possible—as you can probably imagine.
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