#447 - How to Finish Last Minute To-Do Lists (Part 2)

Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This show is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done, hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently. On this show we value contentment, compassion, and living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses, being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I'm so glad you're here. Today is episode 447. How to finish last-minute lists? Part two. Part one was almost exactly a year ago because December is definitely when many of us have last-minute lists. If you start to go wide-eyed when you look at your to-do list and have like a low-key sense of dread that it will all get done on time, this episode is definitely for you. After we figure out our list, we'll have a little extra something where I share some of my favorite playlists and albums I've been listening to. You'll know that music is such an important component of an enjoyable life, especially for me. And this time of year it feels extra musical. And then as always we will celebrate the lazy genius of the week with a really creative approach to habit stacking and will close with a mini-peptalk for when someone does not meet your expectations. Before we get into that, if you are starting this episode about last-minute lists and you feel like you're already behind because you don't have a system for list-making at all, do I have a book for you? So this is an excellent time of the year to revisit my third book, The New York Times Best Seller, The Plan. You don't have to read the whole thing right now because it has time to read an entire book, Windless, or so long. But there is an entire chapter on to-do lists with a variety of tools you can use. Some of us need to sort our list by urgency. Some of us need to sort our list by our own energy. Some of you need to refresh your on how to keep a compassionate to-do list in the first place. If that is you, check out the plan. You can skim the chapter on to-do lists until you land on a type that resonates with you and let that make your December and beyond a little bit easier. Okay, so here's the gist for today. You ready? Short lists are easier to finish. That's the lead, you guys. My job today is to help you turn your long list into several short ones. They will actually be able to finish without turning into an angry robot. Nobody needs that the last few weeks of December. Now, I still love the episode from last year. It is full of important reminders and perspectives as you manage an unruly December to-do list or just busy season in general. But because you probably don't have time to listen to that episode and this episode, here's a quick recap of how to finish last minute list part one before we get into part two. Because I am a sucker for alliteration, I reminded you a year ago of energy, execution and enjoyment as the three components to consider as you finish your last minute list. So we'll review those. Your energy is how much emotional and physical bandwidth you have to give to your tasks on any given day. You know, on Monday, you're dealing with the headache. Tuesday's heavy on work and light on rest. Wednesday has you dragging because it's Wednesday and you're behind because of the headache and the lack of rest. Now it's Thursday and your list seems to have only gotten longer but the energy is tough to find. I will die on the hill for you to honor your humanity before completing a list. You as a person are more important than sending out Christmas cards by an arbitrary date. I hear some of you arguing with me that you're always tired and that if you honored your energy all the time, nothing would ever get done. I agree that that feels true to you and also that it's not the only truth available to you. We do live in an all or nothing culture where you're either lazy or genius, you're either doing it all or you need a long vacation from doing it all. The middle is a bit of an enigma but here it's not an enigma. That's where we live. We are lazy geniuses. You get to decide what to be a genius about and you get to let the other things be less important. You can focus on your special needs kid and eat off paper plates for dinner. You can prioritize time at home this season and say notice some holiday parties you usually say yes to. You can spend your kitchen time baking beloved holiday treats and eat those for dinner instead of also trying to make dinner. You get to choose based on your energy. It might take practice to believe that truth for yourself but in the meantime I will believe it for you. You got to pay attention to your energy. The second E was execution. How will you choose to get things done? Do you batch similar things? Delegate, simplify, vigilantly prioritize like you're a journalist writing the lead. You know in news articles the least important information is all at the end so that articles can easily be cut down without editing. You just cut the bottom off. You might want to execute your tasks similarly. You know doing the most important to the least important so that if you run out of time it doesn't impact something of high priority. And then the third E was enjoyment. It's easy to do things you enjoy. So if a task on your list is by nature unenjoyable, pair it with something that is enjoyable. Like watching a favorite movie while you pay bills or running errands with a friend. Right. Make the items on your list as enjoyable as you can so that getting them done is a little easier. So often we only focus on that second E on the execution. How am I going to get this done? And that is a valid question. But it will only have hard edges if you do not cushion it with your energy and your enjoyment. All three matter. Okay. So that's the 10,000 foot overview of last years how to finish last minute lists. Today let's talk about how to turn your big list into short ones that you'll more easily be able to finish. We're using scrap paper again you guys. I think this might be three at a last four weeks and I'm so pumped about it. So while you grab some paper out of your recycling bin to use for this episode, I want to say a quick thanks to our sponsors who make this show free for you to listen to. Speaking of priorities, it matters to me and to team lazy genius that this podcast remain free for you to listen to with no subscriptions or pay walls and ads are what make that possible. So thank you to our sponsors and to all of you listening. Hello, I'm Melissa Buthday the creator and host of How to Fail. It's the podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right and what if anything we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better. Each week my guests share three failures sparking intimate thought provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is Melissa Buthday in Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's finish some last minute lists short lists are easier to finish. Remember that and you'll be in great shape. Okay. Now the question is how do you make your list shorter? The options are many, especially depending on the season, your personality or the items themselves. But today I want to give you one specific approach and activity if you will to help you manage your long list of last minute things to finish. You could use this not just now for the holidays. You could use this in any season ever. All right, first let's figure out where your current list is. Is it in your head? Is it scattered around on different you know post it's or planners? Is it the big brain dump list in one place? But it's still just one big list. Go ahead and figure out where your lists are and if you're able just gather them up right now. Get all your list together in front of you so that you can turn them into actionable short lists that you'll actually be able to finish. Okay. Next let's talk about time frames. In busy seasons time is your biggest obstacle. Busyness crams more stuff into less space like trying to stuff a bunch of blankets into an already full linen closet. You can probably do it but it'll like take a lot of elbow grease and grunting might cause harm to the things already in the closet knocking stuff over you know. If you look at your list and mentally try and cram it into the finite time of the rest of December I think you're going to start to sweat a little. It's like your own version of Monica's secret closet and friends just cramming everything in there in one big blob hoping that no one sees it. Similar to a closet time is finite. It has limits. You can't stretch it or relive it like Hermione and her time-turner. What you can do is break your time into smaller pieces so that you can more easily organize what goes inside that time. It's like cubbies in your closet. Don't look at December as one big space. Break it into sections so that you can see what you need when you need it rather than everything at once. So not only are shorter lists easier to get done shorter time frames or easier to manage. So based on that knowledge here's your next task. It is to break the next few weeks into time frames. Separate the rest of December or whatever season you're in right now into smaller individual cubbies that you can fill with what those time frames can hold and nothing more. Okay. Now you can create whatever time frames you like but just for the sake of having something to follow. I like to look at Monday through Thursday as one time frame and then Friday through Sunday is another. So if you were listening today when this episode comes out on Monday December 8th, you have let's say now through December 11th, that's one time frame, Friday the 12th through Sunday the 14th, two more cubbies next week, Monday through Thursday, Friday through Sunday, and then one final Monday through Thursday which is December 22nd to the 25th right up to Christmas, right? You could even have one other cubby that's December 26th on until like new years or even when school goes back. Your list probably includes more pre-Christmas items than post but you organize your time cub time frame cubbies appropriately however you would like to. Okay. So if you start from today through Christmas day in the Monday through Thursday, Friday through Sunday, like I just said, that's five cubbies, okay? You can make a sixth that carries you through the end of the year if you would like or do your own thing. The dates themselves don't matter. I just encourage you to make your time frame, closet cubbies small, no more than three or four days. That's easier to manage and adjust within and it's a better place to eventually put your short list. Okay, here's where the paper comes in. If you can or want to write the dates of your time cubbies, you know, on individual pieces of scrap paper, you can set them up on a table or a desk kind of like headings of columns. Okay, those are your small time frames. Now if you have different things happening within those time frames like fixed things, maybe there's an empty Saturday with nothing going on or there's like an extra busy work day where a lot of your regular tasks might get displaced by some big project or something or there's an evening event at your kid's school that might again, displace usual tasks in the home, right? You can write those little details on that slip of paper with a time frame. You're creating kind of like an attic lance summary of that set of time, that little stretch of time and what time is available to you. So you can be like, man, I got a whole Saturday in this one or oh, this one's tight. We need to keep this little extra short because there's a lot more going on, right? So you can give yourself just little details so you know what's going on in each of your little time frames. Now why are we doing this? Because you will feel more calm and confident about your to-do list when tasks are assigned to a specific time frame. You are putting tasks in their place in smaller, more manageable places in like organized closet cubbies that do not have to bring the entire closet crashing to the ground. Okay? This is this is the point. We're giving a smaller space for a shorter list. Now comes the fun part. Maybe if you like to write things down. Write down. You can do this in your head if you want or just digitally. I do think doing this on paper helps you make the wisest decision for you because you can move things around more easily. Here's what you do. Write every task that is currently on your list wherever you have it wherever your list is. Every single task on a single individual strip of paper. Okay? Just make little scraps, little scraps that say you don't need to use scissors even you don't have to make them cute. Just rip them. Say things like go to the dollar store for stocking stuffers and send a gift to the teacher and check with grandma about what she wants me to bring to Christmas dinner every little thing. Okay? If those items have their own deadline you can write that deadline on their paper like on their little strip of paper next to the tasks. Okay? Because technically you can go to the dollar store for stocking stuffers up until Christmas Eve. I suppose if you open stockings on Christmas day but do you want to wait that long? Right? So maybe you could set an ideal deadline and then I'll like know for real deadline. Okay? This is going to help you quickly visualize where the best place is for your tasks based on the deadline. Now you might be thinking oh my gosh Kinder there's so many tasks you might actually have fewer than you think. They feel bigger. Do you have 20 things? You can write down 20 things on 20 little strips of paper. That's all right you'll do it. Okay. Now you can also on those little pieces of paper if you like if it helps. You could do something like place a star or maybe highlight in a specific color tasks that are the most important. Okay? Maybe there is a movie night that is essential to your family traditions and everyone gets new Christmas pajamas. Okay? But you don't yet have the Christmas pajamas. You need to put a big old star on that piece of paper that says get Christmas pajamas with a tight deadline so that you'll order them or shop for them in time to have them for the movie night for the Christmas Eve movie night or whatever you do. Children would be heartbroken without them you know. Now they'll they'll be okay. Is it okay to have heartbroken children? Of course. Life has lots of ups and downs. We and our families have to learn to negotiate. But what we're doing is we're tending to avoidable obstacles. All of this is avoidable if we approach the timing of our tasks through a smaller lens through a smaller framework shorter lists over a shorter time. Okay? So you have your time frame headings at the top of your table. You've got your individual tasks on pieces of paper. Maybe they've got deadlines or a star or a highlight or something to show their importance. Okay? Now you start to place the tasks underneath their most appropriate time frame. Just move the papers around. Give everything a place. Okay? You'll notice that asking grandma what she wants you to bring for Christmas dinner doesn't really need to happen probably until the December 22nd through the 25th time frame because you'll have time to choose something run to the store and make it. Most foods don't require four days to plan for. So just bump that to its cubby to that later cubby. Don't worry about it until then. Like don't think about it until then. Okay? Keep doing this with your tasks until you feel pretty good about the manageability of each of these little lists. You're basically creating five shorter lists from your big one. Organized according to smaller cubbies of time, we're organizing our time closet in the most beautiful way. Plus the analog movement of those tasks, our hands and paper, it's easier on our brains. It's more natural to decide where something goes when we can use our hands and try it out in different places and just move it around. It's also kind of pleasant, believe it or not, gratifying even. Now, if you look at your shorter lists and you think this is manageable for these four days, this is manageable. Excellent. You're almost done. Hang tight for the rest of the group. If instead you look at your shorter lists and you still think they're pretty long or they still feel too overwhelming, don't fret. Guess what? You already have another set of time cubbies that you can access. They're called days. Your current timeframes are made up of several days. Now, if it helps, you can take that shorter list that you hope to do for the next four days and break it into even smaller lists for each individual day. Smaller lists, smaller timeframes, way more manageable. Just keep making your lists and timeframes smaller and smaller. It does not matter how far you go, how small you get, until you feel like this is a list I can finish. The point is to create multiple finishable lists from one enormous seemingly unfinished list. The stuff is all the same, but now you have shelves and cubbies and more intentional organization up that stuff. You have a series of lists that you're like, I can finish that. Yeah, that's manageable. I can do that. What I want you to do real fast is take a photo of your paper tasks. Lift your phone up high, take a photo because someone's going to open a door and when's going to blow them away, a kid's going to fall on them. It's a whole thing. Take the picture just in case. All right. Now, working from either the photo you just took or the papers themselves, now that you took a photo, move each short list somewhere that matters to you where you will see it. Put it in your digital calendar, write it on a pad of paper and each piece of paper is its own list with that time frame on top. It's like this Monday and Tuesday, maybe you made it into two day lists. Like this Monday and Tuesday, these are the things. You can use your seasonal playbook using those weekly pages. That's the intended purpose of those weekly pages when we designed the playbooks. It's to help you create shorter lists over smaller periods of time to help you manage your big to-dos in an easier way. Okay. Now, you have your lists in places you're going to see them. As you move through the rest of this month, this busy season wherever you are, whether it's December or not, do not look at any list beyond the one for the time frame that you're in right now. Okay. Do your list just for today or for the next few days, whatever time frame you set up and that is it. You don't have to concern yourself with what's coming up because you already did that. You've already done that work. You already set aside the space and organized the tasks based on their deadline. You already made your manageable, I can do that short lists. And now you just finish them one by one. Don't look ahead until you finish the one in front. Okay. Now, there's one other benefit to breaking your big list into shorter ones, assigned to specific time frames. It allows you to more easily adjust when other things sneak up last minute. Maybe there's a task that you forgot to put on a piece of paper, you know, when you were doing your activity or something just comes up. When we're operating from a big list and a big time frame and one more thing gets added to it, it feels like the straw that breaks the camel's back. It's trying to cram one more thing into the already cramped closet. But your list is no longer one big cramped closet. You have cubbies now. You have smaller places to stow your tasks until the appropriate time. So adding a new task to a short list feels entirely different than adding a new task to a long one. This is how I personally manage my lists during busy seasons. If you know how many little pieces of paper I have gone through in my life. But I cannot tell you how helpful and successful it is. In this busy season, especially, I have needed to make my big list shorter. I have needed to break my November and December into weeks and then into days. All of my short lists are in my playbooks. They're all like day by day. And I don't feel the weight of all there is to do until Christmas day. I simply see the short list that is mine just for today. Now I have certainly had to adjust things. I had an Amazon return on my list yesterday. But when I went to the store to drop it off, the line was like six people deep. I don't have to get that done today. I can do it later. I can handle it another day on another errand. So I just moved to that task to a different day where there was margin for a smaller time frame. No big deal. The shorter lists, it's easier to make adjustments in them. It's not a big deal. It's like trying to move a canoe compared to moving a cruise ship. Smaller things are easier to move. Smaller time frames are easier to manage. Smaller lists are easier to finish. Okay. So to recap, the goal is shorter lists spread over shorter time frames. Okay. Short lists are easier to finish. So gather your big list, create some small time frames. Again, I like Monday to Thursday and Friday to Sundays myself. Then write each task on a specific piece of paper and just play, move things around, create your smaller lists. If the list underneath a four day time frame feels too long, no worries. Keep making your lists and your time frames smaller until they feel manageable to you. Take a photo so you don't lose the work and then put those lists in a place that you'll see. Only do the list in front of you. Don't worry about the others until it's time. This is like planning your hot dogs. You don't borrow worry when you've already made the decision. Just do the list you made for today and enjoy the benefits of having other lists waiting for tomorrow. You don't have to look at them right now. And guess what just might happen? You might honor the list and then stop. You might play a game with your family or feel the space to take a walk or take a nap. Shorter lists are easier to finish and then shorter lists create more space for you to enjoy your life. And that's how to finish last minute lists. Now it's time for a little extra something. Here are some of my favorite albums and playlist right now. Music always matters in my daily life, but December it like takes it up a notch. I am all for Christmas music as early as you want. But I do have two personal obstacles that prevent me from starting before Thanksgiving. One is that my husband cause does not love Christmas music, which is a shame in every way, but I try to not ram it down his throat until absolutely necessary. And then the second and really more important obstacle is that my son Ben, his birthday is November 30th. He's already a little overshadowed by Thanksgiving and he prefers that we not put up Christmas decorations or really start like engaging in the Christmas holiday until after his birthday has passed and I'm into it. So I've only had a short time of being able to really listen to Christmas music because it hasn't been December very long, but I do have some albums that have been on like a constant run the last few weeks that have been such a good like fall to winter companion. If copyright was not a thing, I would just play little clips here, but we do not have that kind of money. So you will have to search them yourself. The list will also be in the next podcast recap email. So if you want to get that, you can sign up at the lazygeniccollective.com slash listen. Okay, so the last few weeks I've been listening to sure, like see sure, buy fleet foxes the most that whole album. It is incredibly like crispy weather-ish. It is not objectionable. It can be played on carpool runs. You can barely understand the words because that's the vibe of fleet foxes. But that album has been the best recently. Such a go-to. Love it. I have also been writing hard for Olivia well for a long time. Her album Messy was on my list of favorite albums. I think last year that year before, I don't know. That album is so good. Her song, I could be a florist, is still one of my favorite songs ever. She's just spectacular. And her new album, The Art of Loving, is also great. I am less familiar with that one than I am with Messy, but I still love it. She's such a great vibe when you're like cleaning your house or out earning errands or just wanting to feel like an empowered lady who's also like really chill and kind of cool. I love Olivia Dean. She is a sleeper hit. And then a great like background moody winter-ish album that I mentioned ages ago, like years ago, is called Bedroom Walls by November Ultra. November has they must a theorial voice ever. And that album is just like vibes for days. On the traditional Christmas end, I usually stick to playlists, which I will share in a second, that there is one album that has already made a bit of a dent in our listens at the house. It's by a friend of mine named Michael Van Patter. And the album is called Wonder. It's all instrumental pieces and they're just like light and childlike, but really cool. They are a fantastic December background. The song The Birth of Jesus is one of my favorite songs on that album. It is just like it's so happy and calming. I could listen to it over and over again. We kind of do. But mostly I listen to playlists for Christmas songs. I have a whole plethora of Spotify playlists I made years ago that are still the best go-to's. They are playlists that are themed properly for all the different types of holiday activities you might be doing. I have not talked about playlists in a long time. So I will remind you that when I make a playlist, I encourage you to not shuffle because it is made in vibe order. But of course, I can't stop you. Live your life. Okay, so there's a playlist called Kids in the Kitchen. It's for baking cookies with the little people. I particularly love the playlist I made called Pore Me an Old Fashioned, which are like the best standards of the crooners. You know, it's got that vibe. It just makes you feel like you should be in like a sepia-toned room at 10 o'clock at night. Such a great vibe. My favorite two playlists for like driving around to look at Christmas lights are just being in the twilight of your home are Smiley Christmas and Holiday Starlight. And there are many more. So we will link to my Spotify account in the show notes and in the next latest lazy listens email. But you can also search my full name on Spotify, Kendra, Joyner, Adachi, Joyner's J-O-Y, and E-R-Lake Joy. And you can see all my playlists there. You should actually be able to find when you find my account. There's a folder called Winter Playlists and it has them all in there. So hopefully you'll be able to find that. And that is today's a little extra something. All right, now it's time for the lazy genius of the week. This week we have Katie from Kentucky. Katie writes, as a family, we do movie nights and pizza every Friday night and my kids know and look forward to this weekly event. So we connected a fun event with life things that need to happen that we just keep forgetting, namely washing and changing everyone's sheets. So now the kids take a bath, we do movie night and while they're watching, I change their sheets and they end the week with clean selves and clean sheets. I love this. This is kind of like habit stacking, but stacking something that you love and always do with something you don't love and always do, like movie nights and washing sheets. It's sort of like at the top of the episode talking about the enjoyment of tasks, like make your tasks enjoyable in ways that you can and doing your sheets on movie night is a great idea. So I hope you can think of something in your own life where this might work for you. Thanks for the great idea, Katie, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. All right, let's end our episode today with a mini pep talk for when someone does not meet your expectations. This is the season of high expectations. Good gravy. Often we think about disappointing the expectations of other people, but what about when your expectations are not met? I often have expectations. I did not even know were there until they were not met. I find that adults, especially women, especially, especially mothers are in that camp the most. We're so focused on tending to the lists and the people and holding the invisible strings that keep the season together, that we don't give ourselves time to name our own expectations. Then when someone does not meet them, we're kind of thrown off our game because the let down was unexpected. It came out of nowhere. The aftermath of the let down sometimes involves disconnection with the person who let us down. What can we do when this happens? Well, I wonder if there's a little preventative measure we can take first, which is to try and name our expectations. What event or tradition or day or whatever matters the most to you these next few weeks. Imagine what that day looks like and then imagine what would make that day really disappointing. Thinking it through like using your imagination, it could help you name what expectations you're holding even once you did not know you had. Then you can name them to someone involved like a partner or a sibling so that you're not holding them by yourself. You put it in the light, you know. But if you find that someone disappoints you and doesn't come through on one of your expectations, you can be hurt by that, saddened by that, even angry about that. Your emotions they count and can honestly exist as they are. And alongside that, you can also recognize that the person might not have known that this thing mattered to you. And you can show them some grace, cut them some slack. You've let people down before and you are going to be let down to. So treat each other with kindness in that space. I truly think that unmet expectations are just an opportunity to connect more deeply with someone. You get to say what matters to you. You get to choose to kindly invite them into your expectations rather than like holding their feet to the fire. They didn't even know they were there, you know. Expectations are a way to let people in. And I hope that that reframe encourages you even when your expectations are not net. And that's a mini pep talk for when someone does not meet your expectations. If this episode was helpful to you, if you're like, I know someone who would love to learn about short lists over shorter time frames, then you can send this episode to that person or you can go and leave a positive review on Apple podcasts. Both of those things are so helpful to the growth of the show and also just to the betterment of people's lives who listen to it. So thank you so much for sharing. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me Kendra Aducchi, an executive produced by Kendra Aducchi, Jennifer Scher, and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest lazy listens email that goes out every other Friday. The next one will have the link to all of those winter playlists in it. So you can go to the lazygenuscollective.com slash listens. Thanks y'all for listening and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week.