Welcome today’s podcast. So we are going to be talking about today day, breaking up overwhelming tasks so we can get some shiznit done. So of course, that’s probably not the actual title. The actual title is how to break up overwhelming tasks, get things off your plate and get stuff done. Reality. Let’s break up some overwhelming tasks and get some shiznit done. So I am going to have a little mini confession. I talked about it in the first episode, but I hate minutiae. So to me, overwhelming tasks and feeling like I have this never ending to do list that is just epic and probably taller than me. 

That to me is minutiae because it is a bunch of clutter that is just taking up unnecessary time in my life when I could be doing things that I want to do, like recording this podcast, spending time with my friends, reading a really amazing romance novel, spending time with The Hubs, spending time with the Fur babies. You get the point. Like Netflixing and Chilling. Oh my God, most favorite thing ever. I will talk a little too much about Netflix and chilling in this podcast, but that’s okay because that is a point of all of this. I’m not saying that the point of all of our lives is to do fluffy things, but I’m saying the point of our life is to do a lot of things that we enjoy. 

And to get there, we need to clear off some of the things that we don’t enjoy. So this topic was thought of because I was talking with my dad a while ago and he was like, oh my God, I just have so many things to do. And he started listing all these things off and I’m like, well dad, why don’t you try the system I use? Because, no offense, but it doesn’t really seem like you’re getting anywhere. It seems like you’re just treading water. I actually learned this system and I tweaked it, but I learned the basis of the system from an amazing project manager that I worked for when I worked in corporate probably six or seven years ago at this point. And it is amazing. But the best thing I like about it is the way I run my system. 

It’s very portable, but it’s also visual because again, most of us are visual creatures. We need to see things to make sure it’s actually out of our brain. You can’t just think it and say, oh, it’s on my thoughts to do list. No, it actually has to physically be on a to do list. But I used to create these to do lists on awesome journals or paper and things like that. And I will talk about some journals and other tools I recommend later on. But I would write all this stuff down and then I magically wouldn’t have the right journal on me. I wouldn’t have the right tool on me. And so I noticed I was writing this to do list in multiple places, and I was also adding and missing things depending on which list I looked at. 

So I wanted a Master to do list, if you would, that kind of captured my entire life, because I am a whole person. I’m not just a work person or just a wife person, or just a fur mommy dog cat person or the other parts of me. I am one entire person. So I wanted a to do list where everything was on there, so I didn’t feel like I was constantly missing something. And again, I wanted something that was super portable. So let’s go ahead and dive into this. So I will say this first as a caveat. When you start to write out your to do list, regardless of how big it is or how small it is, don’t judge yourself. 

And I say that because when I started this process of creating my to do list, it was like 80, 9100 plus lines of action things to do, like go take out the mail, go to the post office, go do this, take the dogs to the vet, yada. Like step after step after step. And it was just do this at work, do this at home. Don’t forget to return that. Don’t forget to buy this. It was genuinely overwhelming. And when I got it all out of my head, I was like, well, holy crap. No wonder why my brain was so frazzled. How am I expecting myself to remember 100 plus different things and actually get any of them done? So the big reveal as to how I keep it portable is I put everything in Evernote. 

Now, of course, you’ve heard in the intro that all of the resources are at the website. Margaretsevens Co so don’t worry about trying to write anything down. All of it’s going to be there, and all the steps will be there as well. So a couple, maybe five years ago at this point, ben, my husband, got me a subscription to Evernote because I was using it so much, and I was transitioning us from a physical life to more of a digital backup. Life at that point wasn’t like, mainly digital, and I started using it, especially when I could use it on my phone. I’m like, wow, this is really easy. So what I did, which is basically step one, I wrote it all down. I created a pinned note in Evernote. It’s one of the little starred items up there. 

So if you look at Evernote, you’ll see what I mean. So basically, it’s one of the things that whether you’re on your phone or on your computer, it’s one of the topped pinned things that you get to see all the time. So I created a pinned note called TDL to do list, because, again, writing out to do list was apparently too much work. And I wrote it all down. And I continue to use that method till this day. So I don’t want you to confuse a to do list and a marketing plan or something like that. They are two separate things. So I would write in my to do list because part of my job is marketing on a daily basis. 

So I would write on my to do list, create this marketing thing, run this marketing widget, create this sales funnel, create this sale for the month, create yada, yada. And then I have a separate calendar, which is the Danielle Laporte Planner, which I am obsessed with. And that is where I write stuff out on the days. So if I’m creating a marketing funnel, for example, or I’m working on stuff for my job, I can actually write out in pencil and plan, okay, I want this to go here and this to go here. 

Now you don’t have to use the Danielle Laporte planner. I just use it because to me, it is the easiest thing. She has a couple different versions. 
She has a digital, she has a physical, and then she has a physical one that doesn’t have dates in it, which I love that. But it also if you used it on the daily basis as well, it’s a good way to kind of check your priorities. So, yes, you may have this massive to do list, but she has really good prompts and questions in her journals and in her planners to ask you, like, what are your top priorities? Did you take care of your body today? What did you say no to? What lit you up? What are you grateful for? So little things like that, where it’s kind of nice to have a planner and a journal at the same time. She is the best for that. But like I said, I get everything. 

Any task I have to do, I get it out of my head. I write it in my TDL pinned file in Evernote, and then the next thing that I do. So step number two is I like to group like tasks. So if you want to visually see how I structure everything I have at the website. Margaretsevens Co I have an example of a to do list. I call it let me get the actual verbiage ultimate brain dump template. So it’s near the bottom of this post, and you can actually see a dummy template of how I write everything out and how I also group things. And then it’ll make more sense going forward for the rest of the steps. 

So grouping tasks, once you’ve gotten everything out of your brain and I like to say write it all down, wait 20 minutes and you’ll have to write some more stuff down because you’ll be like, oh, I forgot this, and this. So, again, no judging when you actually writing the stuff down, but once you’ve gotten it all out of your head and you’re good for at least the moment, if not the day, then I want you to start grouping like, tasks. So, like, tasks are going to be things that you are going to be doing this week versus things you will be doing next week. 

And I want you to categorize it this week and have a section, exchange your ear and then next week and have that be its own section so that you can see the entire point is you’re being very clear on what are your obligations. So, yes, you may have a lot of obligations, but maybe they’re over the next four weeks. So maybe it’s not all the obligations that you have to do today. Maybe it’s 20 items this week, 25 the next week, 32 the next week, and ten after that. I want you to physically see it and I want you to group them. And then in regards to grouping those tasks, I also want you to start focusing on grouping, like, action items. Excuse me while I drink some water so I don’t cough in your guys’ear again. So grouping like, action items. 

So if you’re looking at your to do list for this week and you have written out a bunch of different things, I want you to notice and pay attention. Okay, how many people do you have to call? Cool. You’ve got six people to call this week. Let’s put them all back to back to back. So I don’t want, you know, for the podcast example, I don’t want you to know drive and return this, call this person, email that person, call this person, facebook message this person, call that person. You see how it’s something, call something, call. So what I’d want you to do is once you’ve grouped everything that has to get accomplished this week, I want you to group all the things that are the same action. 

So if you have to call a bunch of people, let that be the action item of what you’re actually doing. So I would write call Bobby about insurance policy, call Bright House about this, call spectrum about that, call mortgage about yada, call, blah, blah. So my first thing that I can see in that column is call, and then I will do the same thing with email. So email about this, email about that, email, respond this, email, respond that, email this over, email that over, yada, yada. And then from there, I will have a section of drive. So drive and return this drive and pick up that drive and do this drive and do that drive. And I want you to group all of them with the action item of what you actually have to do. 

So you’re going to either pretty much for the most part, drive somewhere, email someone, call someone, or whatever other action item I’m missing off the top of my head. But I want you to group them, because when you’re looking at your to do list throughout the week, it’s a lot easier to go ahead and group your tasks versus doing them sporadically. You’ll feel like you get things done, you’ll feel more accomplished, and it’s also easier on your brain because if you’re in call mode, for example, you’re like, okay, I’ve got 30 minutes. I’m going to call as many people as I can on my to do list. 

Well, your brain is already in call mode, so your brain is going to be like, okay, well, let’s call this person, and then let’s call this person, and then let’s call this person, and then cool, my time’s done. I got four people off of my to do list awesome. Versus call this person, email this person, drive here, man. I don’t feel like I accomplished anything. So it’s the switching from task to task that can really screw us up. So I want you to avoid that by grouping your tasks in your to do list. So enough about badgering about grouping your tasks. Step three is if it is date appropriate, put a date with them. 

So I like to put my dates in Google Calendar because Ben the hubby, and I share Google Calendars, and I also like to put them in my Desire Map Calendar because I use two different calendars that could be a little either overwhelming or confusing, but I use them for two drastically different things. Again, like I said, part of my job is to market things. So I like to in my desire map planner. I like to market and physically write things out of how I want my marketing content to go out because it makes more sense to me. I need to write it, I need to see it, versus my Google Calendar is where I need to be at a certain time. So if Ben and I have a lunch date with a friend, I put it on the Google Calendar. 

And the other reason why I like to put the places I need to be on my Google Calendar is because I like to physically show that I am taking up space. Before, in the past, what I would do is I would go ahead and commit, or Ben would commit to a bunch of different things, and then he would talk to me and I would talk to him, and I’m like, okay, cool, you know, it’s Sunday, we got the day off. Yada, yada. And oh, by the way, I committed us to A, B, and C. He’s like, well, crap, I committed us to De and F, and we’re like, oh, crap, we’re committed to six things because we didn’t talk to each other. 

And somehow we would either figure out how to dump one or combined one and we would hit everything else that we could. But it was such a stressful day and we’re like, oh my God. We didn’t feel like we accomplished anything. We didn’t feel like we gave anyone attention. We just felt like were running from place to place. So what we started doing is the first thing out of either of our mouths is let me check my calendar. So for me it’s, let me check my calendar, for Ben it’s like, let me ask Maggie and check our calendar. And so what we started to do is I actually would write, okay, go to dinner with the in laws, but I would even put the appropriate time in my calendar. 

So if were meeting them for dinner at six and I knew, okay, we’re going to eat dinner, we’re going to do dessert and then we’re probably going to go over to their house afterwards and chill and just hang out and catch up because I really love my in laws, he loves his parents. Or same thing with my parents, we’re going to do this and this. And I’m like, you know, we’re probably going to leave their place around let’s say 9930. So I would put in my calendar dinner with in laws from six to 930. So I was consciously in declaring not only to myself or to Ben, but also to the universe. Like, hey, I am unavailable for anything other than spending time with my in laws. Or same thing with going out with friends. 

Hey, I’m unavailable to do anything else other than spend time with my friends between this time and this time. And when I started doing that, I also started to realize how long things physically take because that is a fault of mine. I don’t think that things take as long as they actually take. So if I have a timer and I put a timer on know, I’ll get a lot of stuff done. But if I am trying to, let’s say a project so a fence. So I was putting up a fence with the hubby a couple weeks ago. I was like, oh, it should only take like 3 hours. Reality, it took like six. But it was because we also had to take a break. We had to go back to Home Depot. 

We had to get this in that because we didn’t realize we needed more of one thing versus the other. So if I had not put in my calendar, it’s probably going to take longer than what I’m expecting. Let me block out the whole day for just the fence so we can start the project and complete it before we stop the project. And then we’ll cook dinner at home that night and watch a red box. So because I already planned it out on my calendar. I was like, okay, I am unavailable to go hang out with friends. I am unavailable to do lunch. I am unavailable to even record the podcast at that point because I am already committing my time to ABCD and Eight or a B and Know, which was fence Home Depot and then dinner and a red box. 
So that is why I like to not only get everything out of my head, but some things they just need to get done within that week, and that’s why they’re grouped under that week. But other things are very time sensitive, and I want you to consciously put them on a calendar. And that’s also why I have them in two separate things, because your to do list and your calendar are two separate things. One of them is a list of tasks you need to do. The other one is a list of places you need to be. And majority of the time, they don’t really overlap. So it’s also a really great way to say no to things you don’t have time for, not overbook yourself. Be very present with the people you have booked yourself for. 

There’s a lot of really great stability and knowing, okay, I’m not going to be running around on the weekend like a nut job because I didn’t plan my time accordingly. And mind you can use a paper calendar for this. The only reason why I don’t, even though I am super obsessed with the Danielle Laporte one, is because, surprisingly, I must call it into my life. I always have people asking me, hey, can you do this? Or, hey, do you want to do that? And of course, I never have my planner with me. So to make life simple and make it easy, I have my to do list in Evernote, which literally is everywhere with me. It’s even on the Hubby’s phone. 

So if I don’t have my phone or if my phone’s down, I can take his phone and I can pull up my to do list. So literally, it’s everywhere. And then same thing for my calendar because I duplicate everything that is on our calendar to Ben’s calendar, whether I’m on my phone because I seem to kill my phone battery a lot, or I’m on his phone. We both are on the same page of what is the responsibilities of the things that we have to take care of in our life. So that is step three as to why you should put dates to the things that are time sensitive. Step four is cleaning up tasks to single items. So what does that mean? Because that probably is not the clearest thing. So what that means is I’m going to use an example of a package. 
If you write down mail package to oh, I’m butchering this. Okay, let me focus. So if you write down mail package to Amazon but you have to break down the lamp, you have to bag it back up. Then you have to tape it, then you have to print the return label, and then you can mail the box to Amazon. That needs to be kind of one task and hear me out into regards to that. So you could very well and in the past I have done this, I have written, know, break down lamp and know from there wrap it in bubble wrap and put in box and print out label and then mail to Amazon. When in reality that’s all one task for you to start and stop and complete something. 

You have to break down the lamp, put it in the box, print out the label and then ship it so where other people will recommend break it out, I don’t because that gives you a sense of taking everything that you have to do and then it’s like tripling it almost. So it doesn’t help you get things done. So if you have a day where you have to do a lot of returns, well, you obviously know that you have to break down the lamp and put it in the box and print out the labels and then put it on the front porch for the delivery person to pick it up to ship it back to Amazon. Why not have a category of processed returns? And, you know, hey, to process the return, I need to do ABCD and E. 

So sometimes if I need to get it really out of my head, I will go ahead and write out all of the steps. But again, I will write out all of the steps. I will put it all one to do list line. And then from there, what I’ll do is I will actually do a little break in between each step. So I’ll do that little backward slash and I’ll write breakdown lamp, put in box, put bubble wrap in, print out return label, put out front for post office person to pick up. And then that’s the entire task. So I’m seeing the whole project from start to finish, but I don’t have it as four different steps, if that makes sense. 

So the caveat to that is when it is a small item like that, make it one line if it is an entire project. So let’s say you are redoing your bathroom. You cannot put that all one line, but you could say, okay, I’m going to write out all one line the things I need to buy at Home Depot. Or maybe you make it a subcategory, or I need to email my bathroom tile selections to the contractor, little things like that. You can make one line. But if it’s a big project, like again, redoing your bathroom or redoing your kitchen, something like that, every step should be written out. So, step five, I’ve alluded to it a lot and it is use action words. So you heard me talk about call this person drive here, email here. 

So when I say process returns, when I say action words, it doesn’t actually have to be the literal action word. Like, this is an action word, this is a verb, this is a blah, this is a noun. It doesn’t have to be that literal, but I want you to be able to see what steps you have to do and then that’s why you also group them so that you can go ahead and understand, okay, well, I need to email all of these people. So that is physically telling you what you should be doing. It’s not an assumption of, oh, I probably should be doing this and oh, I probably should be doing that. It’s not leaving anything up for interpretation. It’s telling you, hey, I have out of the next 30 things I have to do this week. 

And I’m just, again, making up a number. I have 15 people I need to call. I probably should set up a day or maybe an afternoon where I call all of these people back to back to back, because that’s literally half of my list. I could get half of my to do list done this week just by setting up an afternoon to call people. Holy shiznit. So when you use those action words, you’re actually going to be way more productive because you know, again what to do. You’re not saying talk to Brighthouse or ask Brighthouse about bill or about the bill. You’re going to go, hey, call Brighthouse, ask about bill, call vet, make vet appointment, call pharmacy, reorder prescription. You’re going to know what you have to do. 

And then if you’re doing this in spurts, when you’re actually working your to do list, say you’re doing this in little spurts. Say you’re doing it in 15 minutes lunch break or not lunch breaks. 15 minutes breaks or 30 minutes lunch breaks or maybe your hour lunch. You can look at your call tasks using this example and you could go, well, calling and make an appointment. An appointment at the vet is going to be relatively fast and calling the prescription in is going to be relatively fast. Calling the contractor and talking about paint colors, that’s not going to be fast. So let me knock out all of the fast ones first, and then I can leave the heavier ones or the more time consuming ones for maybe the next day or it takes a whole lunch on its own. 

So, again, you’re really clearing things off of your to do list, but you’re clearing it in a manner where you can get a small win every single time and using those action words just makes it easier to group everything. So, again, I alluded to it already, but step number six is blitz out the tasks that have the same actions. So going and making a call day, I like to use the because the days I have off are on Mondays and Sundays. So I like to use my Mondays. For the most part, I like to use my Mondays as my day to do all of my phone calls and I like to do it in the afternoons because to me, that is the easiest thing to do. I’m already having a day off during the week. I want to enjoy my mornings. 

Maybe that means we go out and we have breakfast or we cook breakfast together, or we sleep in or we spend family time, whatever the scenario is. But I like to enjoy my mornings and then my afternoons, I like to call the crap out of everyone. So I go back to my to do list and I’m like, okay, assuming everything is not urgent and I have to call that day, I’m going to set up all my calls for Monday. So I know I’m going to be emailing and responding to other things and doing driving to the grocery stores and doing the returns and all of the other minutiae of life. I will be doing that throughout the week. But Mondays is my call day. Or another one is I have certain days that I pay all of my bills. 

So again, short of making sure that I don’t have a bill that’s going to be late, I take all my bills, I bundle them up, and then I pick most of the time, it’s the first and the 15th. I pick the first and all of the bills that are due from the first through the 16th, I pay all of them in one go because again, it’s so much easier. And then same thing for the 16th or the 15th. From the 15th to the first, I pay all of those bills. So there is a little bit of overlap, but it’s just because I don’t want to be late on anything. And you never know what day the first is going to fall on or the 15th is going to fall on. So blitzing out those common tasks. 
Again, your brain is in the right processing place. It’s already expecting you to do the same thing that you just did. You get to get some things off your plate, get them done, and it gives you small or sometimes big wins, depending on what you get to blitz out. So with that being said, step number seven is carrying over uncompleted tasks to the next day or the next week, depends on what you’re looking at. So that might be scary. But again, when I told you to write everything out of your brain, I genuinely meant everything. So if you have a bazillion unfinished projects, again, sometimes it makes more sense to go ahead instead of writing all in one sentence. Like if you’re doing a renovation on your bathroom, put bathroom renovation. And then underneath put the subsections of what that means. 

But I want everything out of your head. I want you and this is. The scariest part, but you have to trust me on this. I want you to see how complicated you’ve made your life. And I’m not saying this in a way to judge you. I’m not saying this in a bad way of like, oh, you are a bad person because you have 200 action things to do on your list. You’re not bad. You’re just unaware. And again, I learned this from a project manager because we would have clients that these are high level It clients, and were dealing with software for healthcare, and it was a very detail oriented and important job. Like, you could not mess up because this was compliance issues. And regardless of the compliance issues and the fines, you were dealing with someone’s access to medication. 

So you really couldn’t mess up because morally you’d be a horrible person. And then financially, you would get your ass handed to you because of a fine. So when we would have clients email us and email us and yada yada yada ask what the project manager taught us to do is, if it was like a 32nd thing, go ahead and fix it. But if it was anything other than that, we would say, okay, we’re adding it to the punch list. So I’m helping you build a punch list for your entire life that you can use with you throughout your career, and you can use it going forward. 

But we would take those tasks and we would add them to the punch list, and then we would put Jane 722 and then whatever the next column over, because we did this in Excel, the next column over would be the request, and then we would put a priority next to it. So the project manager overall running the project on the other side, the actual client, they would see, oh, wow, jane requested 15 different things, like, are these really important? And then when we would have our status meetings with the clients, we would go, okay, we sent over this document. It’s the project punch list. Have you had a chance to review it? And most of the time we would send it like either the morning or the day before. And the project manager would say, yes, I’ve had a chance to review it. 

And then we would say, do you have any questions in regards to the priorities of things? So where in project management world we use priorities? In life world, I want you to use this week, next week, the week after, like four weeks of the month. So the project manager would go through and say, hey, I made my changes are in magenta. And these things that were medium priority, bump them to low. And this one thing that was a low priority, bump it to high. So you actually got to see what was on your plate, what is going to be taking up your time, what you’re expected to do, what you’re expected to handle. And then over time, this is not something where in project management world, you have this crazy punch list, and it just goes on what feels like forever. 

In personal world, this punch list will get smaller over time. Now, it’s going to either get smaller because you just stop adding so much stuff to your plate. So maybe instead of doing all of the home renovations yourself, maybe you hire a handywoman and shelps, or helps with a chunk of the renovations, or maybe you’re finally done with the renovations so there’s no more needing to add that to your list or whatever the scenario is. The to do list, over time, will start to shrink. But the only way you’ll actually get this stuff done and actually get it off your plate is if you are aware of what you’re expecting out of yourself. And the other part of this, too, is in regards to expecting this out of yourself. 

This is a way for you to be like, wow, I was beating myself up. But I want to say, my dad, when I had him do this exercise, he had two legal pad pages full of things that he needed to take care of, and he wasn’t even finished. He’s like, I just stopped at the two pages because I felt overwhelmed. I’m like, Well, I understand, but that is the entire point of the exercise. You can’t expect yourself to get two legal pad worth pages worth of stuff done in one single day. It’s physically impossible. You’re not three people. You’re not four people. You’re one person. So why don’t we focus on the things that are the most important for that day or for that week? And why don’t we carry over the stuff that we know we can’t do until next week anyway? 

Why don’t we carry it over and get it out of our heads so that we’re not like, oh, don’t forget mail the package next week. Don’t forget, mail the package next week. Instead, we’re like, okay, well, what can I focus on this week? And it starts to help you shift your priorities, shift your perspective. And again, going back to all of it, get stuff done, get things off your plate so you can do the things you want to do. You can spend time with your family. You can go relax. You can indulge in some Netflix and chilling. But if you don’t get the stuff off of your plate, then you’re just going to have that low level anxiety of, oh, I have all of these things to do. I feel so guilty for relaxing. Well, I understand. 

And that’s where it even goes, back into that calendar. You can say, hey, I may have 200 items on my to do list, but Sundays are going to be my family fun day, and I am not going to quibble on that. I’m going to spend the day with my family. We’re going to have breakfast together, we’re going to go here and here. We’re going to do date night and we’re going to watch a movie together or whatever the scenario is. That needs to be a part of your life, too, that needs to be on your to do list, that needs to be on your calendar. Because the point of all of this is not to just work yourself until the day you die. 

The point is to go ahead and get the clutter, get the minutiae, get the bullcrap out of the way so you can really do what you want to do. Sorry for the hiccups. I hope you found this episode helpful. Again, do not worry about trying to write all of this down. All of it is over at the blog at Margaretsevens Co. The checklist is there of the seven steps, the resources I mentioned, if you want to check out Daniella Port’s website and check out the planner that I recommend, it is linked in the show notes. The ultimate brain dump is linked in the show notes. If you haven’t used Evernote and you’re interested in trying it, I have a link again in the show notes for you. So I try to make this as easy as possible. 

The entire point of the podcast is to listen and learn, and then when you have the chance, write it down on your to do list and then go back and implement the things when it’s a more appropriate time. Because majority of the time, I’m going to be honest, when I’m listening to a podcast, I’m in my car driving. I do not want you trying to write this stuff down while you’re driving. Put your hands on the wheels instead or I’m cooking. I don’t want you trying to write this down while you’re cooking. That’s the beauty of audio. You get to listen to it when your hands are busy, but your mind is empty. And you can again go back, use the resources and learn the things you need to and implement the things you need to at a later time. 
But at least you got everything in your head first. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I can’t wait to see you on the next one. 

Have a burning question for me? Want that link I was talking about? Get access to all the resources and links that were mentioned in this episode and others over at Margaret Stevens Co. And if you haven’t, don’t forget to sign up for my VIP list where I share special bonuses, prelaunch coupon codes and advice I don’t share anywhere else. 
Thanks for listening.