Here’s what one of my clients came to me with recently (I’m paraphrasing): Alyssa, I really want to get to this house decluttering (I’ve half started, and can imagine the finished picture), but every day, it keeps falling off my to-do list! How can you help me get on track to finish this project?
It may be counter-intuitive, but here’s what I told her to do: take that task completely off her to-do list.
If the decluttering isn’t getting done, stop guilting yourself over it.
If you aren’t doing the grand spring cleaning that you thought you should, quit putting it on your task list every day.
If you know you have no intention of *actually* updating the description of every single YouTube video you’ve ever put on your channel, don’t pretend you’re doing it.
You see, by leaving that house purge on your to-do list, you’re allowing yourself to live under a constant state of guilt.
A cloud of it, if you will, that’s hovering over every section of your day. Every time you glance at your must-do list and say, “No, not getting to that yet.”
It sits there, and it grows, and grows, and grows. (The resentment and self-guilt, I mean.)
So go radical – refuse to buy into that anymore. Delete it completely.
Trust that if you really need to get the KonMari finished, you’ll *want* to.
That if spring cleaning needs to happen, you’ll get a surge of energy one fine day and just do it.
That if those YouTube descriptions are truly out of date, you’ll pop it to the top of your priority list one day and knock ‘em all out.
But only if you *have* to. Need to. *Want* to.
That’s the key.
Trust yourself. Trust your intuition over the to-do list.
Because if you can live just fine with dusty baseboards, you were right – that spring cleaning didn’t need to happen.
Now, here’s the side part I told my client: If you really want to get to one of your “should” tasks (like the decluttering), but haven’t been able to, schedule at least 3-5 days where you have nothing going on.
Why? Because once you’ve been properly filled up – you’ve taken enough time off and rested – you’ll *want* to go back to that to-do list!
So yes, you can hack a not-getting-done project by taking a no-expectations vacation, and on purpose letting yourself get bored.
But that’s *after* you’ve decided whether this always-getting-skipped project on your list really needs to happen at all.
