organize your life! ... bring order to chaos
Do you know the feeling of just having done everything? No more open tasks for today, just put your feet up and enjoy the day?
If not, then console yourself. Almost everyone has the feeling of suffocating in tasks and having way too many open tasks at the end of the day. Work, household and family, then bring something to the post office here, extend a passport there and do not forget the doctor's appointment. There are even beautiful things like planning a vacation or meeting with friends that feel to be only another to-do, for which one does not actually have time.
Finish the job, or it'll finish you
The main problem with this is that the more open tasks you have in your head, the more your brain has to deal with the organization of these tasks, without even realizing it. In the beginning, you will be in agony of choice, then desperate not to keep up, and eventually you will start to forget things. First unimportant ones, then important.
And at the end of the day, you do not proudly look back on what you have done, but frustrated on all that you have not done.
The path to procrastination
But it gets worse. Your main antagonist is procrastination. Even if you have not known this tongue twister what it means, you know exactly. Here work, there work, everything piled up to the ceiling. Then it's easy to grab into the task box at will and peck that out, which seems to be the most comfortable, even if its priority is really far behind. For example, if you urgently need to clean the bathroom and you noticed that the shower gel is scarce. Then there is the temptation to go shopping for a short time and to combine that with a meeting in the café with friends, because that is long overdue.
This temptation to put important things off and even have a good conscience, that's the deal with procrastination. Because at the end of the day you not only have the work of the next day in front of you, but also the deferred of the last days. The pile grows bigger, until it devours you.
And then comes the burnout ...
At some day the point is reached where you have pushed so much in front of you that the thoughts in your head are just buzzing. And no matter what you want to address, something else seems more urgent. And again something else. And again something else. Your thoughts are spinning in circles and you can't do anything to motivate you to anything. Welcome to the burnout!
This 3-point plan will help you!
1) Out of the head!
Free your brain from the burden of having to manage all your open tasks. Capture all tasks bit by bit in to-do lists. That does not make the pile of work smaller, but at least manageable. Every time you think of something that needs to be done, grab it now and write it down in a to-do list instead of having to keep it in your head. The same applies to purchases: write down immediately and check off mentally.
2) First muck out
Now that you have the tasks written in front of you, you will notice that there are essential, urgent tasks (for example, to comply with binding deadlines) and other nice-to-have tasks, such as cleaning up the basement. If you are totally overworked and can not see any way out, dare to completely eliminate less important work. Then the basement-cleaning up this year is no longer feasible. Maybe next year again.
3) Plan instead of improvise
Now that you have the overview, begin to do the tasks in small, manageable portions. Plan a manageable workload, which you can accomplish on one day and honestly plan to work off this daily list completely. Your motivation: If you have worked through all the points on the list, you have after work. Then you can enjoy life again without a guilty conscience, actually having to do more.
to-do-go can help you
Everyone has certainly once created to-do lists by hand. A piece of paper and a pen, that's all you need. But at some point such paper to-do lists become confusing. Then you have a piece-of-paper of lists where most of the tasks are already done, and you have to stop again to get the mess under control, making the cycle start right over.
to-do-go offers you a simple, free alternative. Instead of capturing the to-dos on paper, you enter them in to-do-go. Here you can sort your to-do lists thematically into any categories, such as one for the household, one for work and one for public authorities. And in each category, you can enter as many to-do lists as you like, sorted by date or by room: living room, kitchen, bathroom. Completed tasks dazzle on their own and a search function helps you to find everything at any time.
And not only that. With to-do-go you can also manage shopping lists and create recurring to-do lists (such as cleaning plans). Thereby to-do-go accompanies you everywhere. Because your to-dos are not stored on the device where you captured them, but in the cloud. So you can plan your purchases at home on the laptop and in the supermarket you can go through your shopping list with your smartphone in turn without pondering.
Try it yourself: www.to-do-go.com