Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to ask yourself whether you could finish a
Speaker 1: task before moving it to the next day's to do list.
Speaker 1: Don't take it for granted that unfinished tasks will get
Speaker 1: migrated from one day to the next. Pause to consider
Speaker 1: whether you could just get the tasks done. Longtime listeners
Speaker 1: have probably heard me recommend seeing a to do list
Speaker 1: as a contract with yourself. I see putting a task
Speaker 1: on a to do list as a promise that you
Speaker 1: will complete the task that day. For people who don't
Speaker 1: take that perspective, though, I would suggest at least being
Speaker 1: a little slower to migrate a task from one days
Speaker 1: to do list to the next. When you review your
Speaker 1: to do list at the end of the day, Before
Speaker 1: you migrate lots of tasks to future days, consider what
Speaker 1: you could actually just get done. Could you finish? Maybe
Speaker 1: you needed to send personalized invitations to twenty five people
Speaker 1: for an event your organization is hosting. You have sent
Speaker 1: invitations to fifteen of them. When your alarm rings to
Speaker 1: tell you it is time to start dinner, could you
Speaker 1: take your laptop down to the kitchen from your home
Speaker 1: office and knock out the last ten invitations while you
Speaker 1: are waiting for the water to boil. Then you don't
Speaker 1: have to push this task to the next day. Or
Speaker 1: you might have intended to go to the dry cleaner
Speaker 1: on your way to work after taking your kids to daycare,
Speaker 1: but you skipped it because you wanted some desk time
Speaker 1: before your first meeting. Could you drop off your dry
Speaker 1: cleaning on the way home from picking up your kids
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, then you don't need to kick it
Speaker 1: forward another day. Perhaps a task isn't time consuming, it
Speaker 1: is just unpleasant and that is why you haven't done it.
Speaker 1: Could you simply resolve to hit send on the difficult
Speaker 1: email before you leave for the day. How great will
Speaker 1: that feel to not have it hanging over your head.
Speaker 1: For a task that is time consuming, perhaps half hour
Speaker 1: after your kids go to bed might give you the
Speaker 1: time to finish it. A relatively short second shift could
Speaker 1: be worth it. It can be easy to keep migrating
Speaker 1: a task day after day from one to do list
Speaker 1: to the next, But if the task wouldn't take that
Speaker 1: long in the first place, then migrating it is probably
Speaker 1: not necessary. If you get into the habit of asking
Speaker 1: yourself whether you could finish, I think few things will happen. First,
Speaker 1: you will get more done because you won't concede defeat
Speaker 1: too early. Often the answer will be yes, I could
Speaker 1: get that done today. Second, your to do list will
Speaker 1: get shorter because tasks will get done instead of constantly accumulating.
Speaker 1: And finally, and perhaps most importantly, you may be more
Speaker 1: productive during the core part of the day If you
Speaker 1: start to expect yourself to finish what you set out
Speaker 1: to do. Asking whether you can finish can help you
Speaker 1: find the middle ground between feeling pressure to complete all
Speaker 1: the tasks on a day's to do list come what may,
Speaker 1: and just feeling that you do what you do and
Speaker 1: you don't do what you don't do. Asking whether you
Speaker 1: can finish means you just might finish, and that can
Speaker 1: be great to see. In the meantime, this is Laura,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.