Aw, crap! Another item for my to-do list!
Ever feel that way? That your list keeps getting longer, and you’re no closer to finishing?
Ever feel that your list is running you?
If you do, then it’s time to shift your relationship with your to-do list. You can shift that relationship in the most powerful way.
Your to-do list, or get-to-do list, as I prefer to re-frame it, is a reflection of how you choose to spend your time and energy.
It’s so easy to get caught up in reacting. You get a request, or see a situation you need to respond to. You put it on the list.
What if you could stop reacting? Instead, you can create your list.
Create it based on how you want to have impact in your business, your life, and in the world.
Impact is something I’ve become acutely aware of lately. I’ve seen businesses and organizations with environments that are energizing to work in. People are excited about what they do. They are inspired by what they offer. And they see and feel the positive effect that they have on the people they serve, and even in the bigger world.
This is the kind of business I want to have. This is what I want to continue to create with my own business.
My recent experience of coaching entrepreneurs in South Africa has brought my thinking about impact more into focus.
The focus of your get-to-do list can be the impact you want to have, in your business and beyond.
How do you do this?
I started by beginning each week with a look at my larger purpose, my mission, my Big Why, as I call it when I work with my own clients. Your Big Why is your big goal, the reason you have this business in particular. It’s what you hope to achieve, the effect you plan to have, by offering what you do and the way you offer it.
By planning the week with that in mind, I more closely stayed true to that Big Why, the bigger goals I have for my business.
Then, I added looking at my get-to-do list for the day, and doing the one thing that would have the most impact on my business first. That in itself is a powerful change in using my time and energy more effectively.
Now, I take this a step further. Everything that I do, every request I receive, every situation that needs a response gets filtered through my Big Why, the impact that I want to have, personally and in my business. That way, each item on the list becomes part of creating the vision that I have for my business and life.
Does this resonate with you? If it does, you can start right now to shift your experience of your to-do list from letting it run you, to something you create. It can pull you toward bigger impact, toward your own contribution to positive change in your business and in the world.
You’re likely not going to be able to make this shift all in one leap. That’s ok. What’s important is to move in this direction, perhaps starting with the most impactful thing first thing in your day, and looking at your Big Why before you make your get-to-do list for the day or for the week.
Just taking these steps will make your get-to-do list more impactful. And you can keep moving in that direction.
Take a look at your get-to-do list right now. Take a clean sheet of paper, or start a new document if you keep it on your computer.
Use your Big Why filter, your impact filter, to look at each item. Decide which ones really do fit in. Which ones will allow you to move in the direction of having the impact you want to create? Write those down on the new page.
Those are your new, and powerfully impactful, get-to-do’s.
With this approach, you’ll eliminate the things that take up your time with little impact on your business. You’ll free up some time to do more of what you choose to do.
This approach also works when you’re screening requests for your time. Invited to a meeting? How does attending this meeting have impact on your Big Why? Not at all? Then it’s a clear no. Definitely does? Then it’s a big yes!
How do you want to have impact in your business and the world? It all starts with your to-do list.
If the coaching in this article is valuable and you want to talk with Ursula about coaching, click here to arrange a call.
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Here’s your Alchemy Assignment, your chance to transform what you learned in this article into awareness and action for you and your business:
Start with your current to-do list. First step: if the title reads, ‘To Do List’, then change it to ‘Get-to-Do List’ or something else that will send you a message every time you look at it that you are the creator of this list. Language is important, so use it to lift yourself up. Next step: do what’s suggested in the article. Review your list with the impact you want to have in your business, life, and the larger world in mind. Make a new, clean list with only those items on it. You’ll immediately have a more impactful list.