Do you ever wake up and write a humungous to do list that you’re never going to have time to do?

It is often a Monday morning – did you do this yesterday? After a slower weekend, you wake up and rush straight to a notepad and write out a gazillion things to complete before 5pm. Chances are you’re never going to do them in that short time frame.

Then, you never getting round to do those things, even if you have time during the rest of the week. A little voice in your brain is saying that ‘these are Monday’s jobs’ and if you didn’t manage to get them done in time, you write them off.

This is not the way to work. Instead, I want you to try this. Write a to do list for the most important things you have to get done that day (I’m not just talking about a Monday list!). Your top FIVE things that you must do. At the bottom of that write three additional tasks to do, making sure to title them “Additional Tasks – Don’t HAVE To Do”. This way, your mind is focusing on only the most important things, and if you have time to can do those additional tasks.

Another way to do it is to write out everything you need to get done for the whole week. I find it helpful to use a weekly desk pad (mine is A1 and has space for each day of the week, plus a little calendar and to-do list box). Or simply write out a big list for the whole week. Then, split them up into the five days. This way, you are spreading out the load. Some days you may have more tasks than others depending on deadlines. However, this is a much clearer plan to your week, and you can fit in additional tasks or chores like doing laundry and cleaning around your main priorities at work or school.

And remember this: you don’t have to get it all done today. Sometimes we wake up and we realise perhaps we’ve been quite lazy recently or haven’t got done as much work as we should have. When we’re in this mindset, it’s really easy to get carried away with it and think that you have to get everything done in one day. It’s a good thing to want to be productive, but it gets toxic and heads towards burn out if you’re forcing yourself to get EVERYTHING done. Just get the main priorities done and I promise you you’ll have a clearer head.