Episode 91: Still Behind? This Might Be Why
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Still dragging yesterday’s to-do list into today? That habit might be the very thing keeping you stuck. In this episode, I’m breaking down why rolling over tasks from one day to the next is quietly sabotaging your productivity—and what to do instead. You’ll learn how to plan with intention, adjust for real life, and stop letting your list run the show.
This is just a sneak peek of what I’ll be teaching in Plan It, Do It, Done, my free class happening this Thursday, January 29 at 12pm ET. If you want to learn how to get out of catch-up mode for good (even when life throws curveballs), you won't want to miss it. Sign up at themothernurture.com/class.
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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Do you feel like no matter how much you do each day, you can never get caught up? If you're anything like my clients and a lot of the listeners I've been talking to, I'm guessing your answer is yes. You live with this nagging feeling that you are behind. If you could just get some time to get organized, get caught up, you'd finally feel like you were on top of things and that would feel so good.
But whether you have a newborn, toddler, or teenager. Large blocks of time like that are hard to come by, and there's always more to do. You need to be able to get things done now without waiting for more time. If that resonates with you, I want to invite you to a brand new training I'm offering called Plan It.
Do It. Done three simple steps for working moms to finally feel like they're on top of things at work and at home. During this class, I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to get organized, how to focus, and how to finally get things done so you can get out of catchup mode for good. It's happening on Thursday, January 29th at 12 noon Eastern, 9:00 AM Pacific.
Head to themothernurture.com/class to register today. Again, that's themothernurture.com/class. I can't wait to see you there.
You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
And welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode feels very timely and very relevant to my own life, and I'm guessing it will for a lot of you too. I'm located in Cincinnati and like much of the country in the US right now, it is bitterly cold here and we are buried under.
A little over a foot of snow, which is a lot for us. A lot, a lot. So. School is already canceled for today on a Monday. We've already gotten the call that it'll be canceled tomorrow due to cold and ice. Looking ahead at the future forecast, I am starting to wonder if my kids will be in school at all this week, and I know that so many of you are navigating the same unexpected week ahead.
And while this isn't exactly the topic of this episode, I do want to address the first thing that comes up whenever I'm talking to anyone about planning. For your time, thinking about what is most important to get done, that when we have days like this where we have a sick kid home where an unexpected event got put onto our calendar, or school is closed, or daycare is closed, or your nanny is sick, that we think, what is even the point of planning?
I don't know what I can get done. So what's the point? And I would encourage you if that's you sitting in this similar situation this week, to still make a plan to still think about what is most important and think through how you're going to get those things done. Now that you have kids at home or this unexpected schedule, or think about what you're going to have to push out and let go of.
Because work goes on, life goes on. Our lists don't grow shorter. And it is important though, to think through those scenarios. And now that we have more information, what are we going to do about it?
All right, I'm off my soapbox now. But I'm gonna hop back on a different one because one of the pitfalls that I see so many of you make when it comes to keeping a to-do list, creating a plan for your days is what you do with all of the items that you didn't get to.
You know those days where you only get through maybe a fraction of your list, instead of crossing all of those things off like you envisioned when you sat down in the morning, you ended up dealing with a work crisis. You had to respond to lots of interruptions, or you had a sick kid that you had to go pick up.
And so you end the day with a to-do list that looks almost exactly the same as it did when you started the day. Hardly anything got crossed off, and so you do what? So many do. You just reuse the list. You push all of those tasks to tomorrow. If it's on paper, maybe you literally just keep the paper as is on your desk, because those things still need to get done.
If you time blocked any of those tasks, maybe you just drag them over to the next day, or you just leave them there as open. If you're using some sort of to do or project management tool, like a software or app, you just leave them unchecked and they're gonna show up and roll over to the next day.
But what I need you to hear is that carrying over tasks from one day to the next is actually putting you further behind.
Because what if today's tasks, the things that you thought you were going to do that you didn't end up having time to do. What if they don't fit , into tomorrow's schedule either? Or what if you don't have the capacity the next day to accomplish those tasks? Or what if there are more important things on your plate the next day
that you should be putting your time and energy toward completing not yesterday's tasks?
When you push tasks forward, you leave them open without considering what that day can actually hold You. Set yourself up to get even less done, to be even more overwhelmed because now you have more options.
The scene from the holiday where Kate Winslet is talking to Jasper. Do you know what I'm talking about? And she says, square peg, round hole. To talk about how the two of them don't fit together. That is what is happening when you try to carry over. Yesterday's tasks to the next day without considering whether or not they actually fit.
If any of you have gone through my Getting It Done Guide, you know that I love a good closet analogy. If you don't have that guide, you can always grab it.
Over on my website at themothernurture.com. But the point is I, I think laundry, clothing, closets are all something that we can relate to. We deal with those on a daily basis, and so I think they make for a real. Great analogy, so let's pretend that you are someone who lays out their outfits the night before.
Maybe some of you do that. I went through a season where I dabbled in setting up my outfits the night before. This was more when I went into the office. I've had clients who love to do this, who've had great success with it. This is something that so many of us often do for our kids as well.
If we have very rushed mornings or tight turnaround times and we have to be out the door, setting out your clothes can be a great thing. So let's pretend that that is your reality. That is something that you do. So let's say that you plan to work from home on Wednesday because you don't have any meetings or conference calls.
It's the perfect day to work from home, so you lay out your favorite matching sweatsuit. I'm very into my matching sweatsuits these days, thanks to my sister for getting me hooked on some really great ones. And so you have a sweatsuit laid out for Wednesday, but when you get up and you start getting ready for the day on Wednesday, you get this notification and turns out you're gonna need to go into the office.
So you leave the outfit that you had laid out for today and instead you put on trousers and a button up. Let's go with a basic in the office uniform. So you head out the door, instead you pivot and you end up wearing those trousers instead of sweatpants.
Now. You don't wanna waste that outfit that you spent time laying out that color coordinated sweatsuit that's so comfy and you love it so much, so you decide to carry it over and wear it on Thursday instead, why not? You spent the time to think about it, to lay it out. Let's just use it on Thursday, since it didn't fit into what ended up happening today.
But when you get to work on Thursday. Remember that you're actually presenting to the board and you definitely should not be wearing a sweatsuit. In fact, you should probably have on a suit suit, or at least a jacket or blazer of some kind.
Now, you might be chuckling because who would ever show up in a sweatsuit to present to the board? Because we know that outfits don't just carry over from one day to the next. I'm guessing that with each day, even if you're laying out your clothes the night before, you're going into your closet or into your wardrobe after you've checked your schedule, after you've considered the weather.
And maybe you thought also about what's actually clean and what you actually feel like wearing.
All of those factors influence what outfit actually works. And so the same is true for all of those items on your to-do list.
Each day holds a different schedule. Your capacity is different day to day, and you have a different set of priorities and deadlines from one day to the next. When you carry that to-do list over, you are trying to squeeze yesterday's priorities into today without even considering, if that makes sense.
And what's so often ends up happening is that you get less done for a variety of reasons. You are looking at a list now that is twice as long, and so it takes you twice as long to decide what to work on next. Instead of choosing from three or five things, you're now choosing from 10 items, and that can feel overwhelming.
Or when you carry things over, if you go first in, first out, you start with yesterday's tasks and run out of time before you get to what was on the list for today, and what's on the list for today has a real immediate deadline or consequence if it doesn't get done. Not to mention if your schedule is different, maybe the tasks from yesterday don't actually fit with the time gaps that you have to work on those to-dos, or you're not in the right place to get those done, or you're not in the right mental space either.
Now there is a time and place where we just have to do what is on the list, regardless if we have the energy for it or we feel like doing it. But if you follow the way that I teach planning and getting things done, that is always something that we wanna take into consideration because you could spend twice or three times as long to get something done if you put it in the wrong place at the wrong time or with.
The wrong energy.
So for all of those reasons, you can see why the result is almost always that you get less done. I will admit that occasionally I will have a day where the stars align and my energy is just really high, and I can bring all of yesterday's tasks over and get those done along with today's, but I can count on probably one hand the number of times where that's actually been the result in all of the other instances. It just doesn't work that way.
So what do you do instead? What do you do with all of those items that you didn't get done that now have to go somewhere? They still have to get done or we think they have to get done though. That is something we should definitely revisit. What do you do instead? Well, just like with the clothing analogy, you go back to your closet, you go back to your closet, you have different information.
Now you know that a sweatsuit isn't gonna work. So you go and you see what pants or what tops, or what dresses do I have clean and available and that fit the weather or fit my mood today.
Then maybe you can carry the sweatsuit over to the next day, but maybe not. You cannot just assume, and I think that's the biggest point that I want to make here. You cannot assume you go back to your closet, you go back to your running list of all of the things that you could do, and you re decide. Maybe you recommit to the list that you had made yesterday that you didn't get through.
Maybe you toss that entire thing out and you go ahead with what you had on the plan for this new day. Maybe it's a combination of the two lists. Maybe you go back and realize, you know, I thought that was really important yesterday, but now that I see what's coming up later on in the week, or I see how little I got done, I'm gonna table that or I'm gonna delegate that.
Or it's gonna be a not now task,
and every day that you reexamine. You review everything, you'll have a different outcome. You'll have a different answer as to what the right combination or what the right next step is, because every day is different. We have different information and as so many of us are learning right now in the middle of this huge winter storm is that there is no such thing as a quote unquote normal day or a normal week.
I wore sweatpants all weekend. We were snowed in all weekend. Today I am gonna try to get a little bit of work done while my kids have some screen time and some outdoor play with neighbors. So I'm wearing hard pants. That fits my mood. That fits my energy for today, and you can bet that I went back to my full list to decide what can I do now given the information that I have and given the week that I'm likely to have ahead of me.
So the next time you reach the end of your day
and you have some items left on your to-do list,
before you just carry them over, before you just push them out to tomorrow. Be sure you go back to the closet. Be sure you consider what your schedule will look like tomorrow, what your capacity will look like, what's actually important tomorrow. Before you decide whether those things from today fit into tomorrow, don't just assume, decide.
That's what I have for you today. If you like this episode, if you like this tip or this idea of how to be more effective at getting things done, I would love to see you in class on Thursday, just a few days away. I may have kids at home, who knows? I'm sure you're juggling a lot this week as well. But I can promise it will be worth your time because around here we are realistic.
We understand that there are lots of things that we have to get done, lots of responsibilities that we have, and that life with kids and a career is unpredictable. So do the best you can to show up to class on Thursday.
At 12 noon Eastern
for Plan It Do It Done. I really hope I'll see you there. You can head to themothernurture.com/class to get signed up. All right, until the next episode. I will talk to you soon. Stay warm and take care.
Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast. And don't forget, if you're not signed up for my brand new class, plan It Do It Done three simple steps to help you finally feel on top of work and life.
You can head to themothernurture.com/class to register today. It's happening on Thursday, January 29th, and I really hope I'll see you there. All right, I'll talk to you again soon in another episode of the podcast.
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