If you’re anything like me, you’ve got piles of stuff to deal with lying around and weighing on your mind. Possibly to the point where you feel so stuck you can’t move ahead.

And it’s probably not even the truly important stuff—just the basic “to do’s” that happen over and over. Bills to pay, errands to run, magazines and journals to read, receipts to sort, laundry to do, papers to file, etc., etc., etc.

When all of these recurring tasks keep accumulating, how can you ever become current with them, let alone get to the things that you really care about?

You can. But first, you need to revise your definition of “caught up.”

Believe me, I know how tough this is. I’m still partly in denial about the fact that life’s inbox will never be empty. It’s no fun feeling like you’re in perpetual catch-up mode, and the fantasy of being on top of everything…someday…is SO attractive.

But our lives are much too complex for that these days.

There’s no way we can ever accomplish EVERYTHING we want (or think we should), so we need to be selective. That’s a meaty topic in itself, but first we need to feel in control of our current situation. And so…

Today’ I’ll offer one practical, hands-on way to deal with the backlog of stuff that’s holding you back.

Here’s how.

First, choose a physical space to start clearing. Start with one room at the very most, or make it even smaller—such as your desktop or a single file drawer—so that when you get it cleared you’ll have a feeling of accomplishment and spaciousness.

Pick an area that will make a difference in the way you feel. Would it be nice to eat at your dining room table again? Or find things in the hall closet? OK, start there.

Second, if you don’t already have one, find some kind of calendar and planning system that you will actually use, at least for now. Keep it simple—maybe a spiral notebook for making lists, some sticky flags to mark off sections in it, and an inexpensive calendar to jot things in. Think basic and functional while you figure out what system works best for you.

Next, grab a few empty boxes and start going through the physical space you’ve chosen. Remove any “to do” items and sort them into three and only three groups—Urgent, Non-Urgent, and Fuhgettabouddit.

In my experience, the Fuhgettabouddit pile is the toughest one. It’s where you need to be honest and ask yourself the question, “What’s the worst that can happen if I never do this?” If the answer is something you can live with, the corresponding piece of paper or other object goes into the Fuhgettabouddit box. And then you know where to dump it.

The urgent stuff goes in another box and will remain somewhere easily accessible for now. The non-urgent material goes into the other box(es) and can be moved to a temporary holding location.

The main thing is to get your to-do piles contained and out of the way. You’ll be surprised how much better this makes you feel, even though you haven’t actually done anything about what’s in the boxes yet.

Now comes the interesting part that’ll make you go, “Huh?”

Don’t worry about the stuff in the boxes.

That’s right. You’re starting today with a clean slate.

The Fuhgettabouddit box has been dumped. The non-urgent material is waiting in the wings. The only thing you should do is quickly go through the “urgent” box for anything that needs to be taken care of by a certain date, then schedule it in your calendar.

Leave the things themselves (bills, blank birthday cards, coupons, presentation handouts, or whatever) in the box for now.

Because now there’s only one place they can be. That alone can remove enormous amounts of stress.

Every evening take a quick peek at the next day on your calendar to check what you’ll need to have with you physically, then find it in the “urgent” box and place it where you won’t forget it in the morning.

So now you don’t even have to worry about the urgent stuff falling through the cracks.

Now, make it a habitual part of your daily or weekly routine (you can schedule this in your calendar as well) to gradually dig through the “non-urgent” box or boxes. This can be as simple as ten minutes twice a week, or five minutes a day. Nothing there is pressing, so it doesn’t matter if you go slowly, as long as you gradually work through the box(es). Just make the time period you block out extremely achievable and non-intimidating so you’ll really do this.

You now have a plan for dealing with your backlog and can start fresh.

The final step is to design a VSS (Very Simple System) to manage the stuff that moves through the area you’ve just cleared.

In other words, you’re starting from scratch—from a place of spaciousness and clarity. Without all the stuff that’s been cluttering up the space and keeping you stuck.

Again, begin simply. If you’ve just excavated your desk, for instance, you might create a new home for any bills that need to be paid—under a paperweight, in a tiny vertical sorter, in one of those giant paperclip standup thingies.

Or you might set up an “in” tray for magazines and other papers you want to read—and resolve not to let the stack grow higher than the top of the tray. If it does, make it a point to deal with enough of the things in it (read, file, or toss) to whittle the stack back down to size.

And that’s it, at least for starters. Just change one or two small things at a time, and wait until you get in the habit of using your new VSS before tackling another physical area and setting up more of them.

Baby steps. Just remember—baby steps.

Let me know how it goes.

(Image courtesy of ex novo)

The first post in this series explained why you need an Outboard Brain, and got you started on the first step of creating one by asking you to do a time-released brain dump.

Time for the next step.

If you have gone through the process since then, you now have either a deck of cards or a notebook (or maybe a computer file) filled with everything you want or need to do. And you’re probably getting impatient about what to do with them already. So let’s dive in–we’re going to categorize these suckers and make them start earning their keep.

NOTE: I forgot to mention something in my first post in this series–you should definitely include dreams and long-range plans on your list. They’ll get their own category, so go ahead and jot down at least a few now if you haven’t already. That kickboxing class you’ve been thinking about but are more than a little intimidated by? Taking your kids on a cross-country vacation? Learning Slovenian? C’mon. You know what yours are.

OTHER NOTE: I’ll do some explaining first, but at the end of the post I’ll give you a list of common categories to help get you started.

YET ANOTHER NOTE: Try not to make your categories either too broad or too narrow. For instance, having only two categories for “Work Stuff” and “Home Stuff” probably won’t be very helpful, unless your life is MUCH simpler than most people’s. On the other hand, having separate categories for “Grocery Store,” “Post Office,” “Pet Store,” etc. is too cumbersome. Try a middle-of-the-road category like “Errands.”

Now let’s get into it.

The Card Method

If you’ve got a deck of index or other cards, find a section of floor so you can spread them out. Inform any small children and pets that these cards are not toys, nor are they edible.

Begin laying out the cards in groups, keeping them all visible if there’s room. Don’t come up with a list of categories beforehand–let them develop organically as you sort. This is the advantage of the card method. You can move things around and change your mind until everything is organized into the groupings that make the most sense.

Now take a moment to rank each category’s cards in their approximate order of urgency and/or importance. Don’t spend too much time on this–if you can’t decide whether picking up a birthday card for Aunt Edna is more or less urgent than figuring out the menu for the dinner party you’re hosting next week, just choose one of the two and move on.

When you’ve got them how you want them, sweep each group into a stack. Jot the category names on cards–preferably ones that will stand out, such as on differently colored paper, cards with raised tabs, or with sticky notes or flags attached to them. Clip or rubber-band all the categories into a single stack if you have a way to visually differentiate them, and into separate stacks if not.

Now hang tight for a moment while I talk to the folks who did this a different way.

The Computer Method

I didn’t mention this method in the last post, but some of you may have created your to-do lists on the computer. If so, you can sort them into categories by moving them around with merry cut-and-paste abandon.

The only drawback is that you probably won’t be able to see everything onscreen at once; you’ll need to scroll up and down in your document. Still, good for you! The items are movable. And I didn’t even tell you to do it this way.

The Notebook Method

This will be a little harder if you’ve written your to-do list in a notebook, but not much. First, grab some highlighters in as many different colors as you can, a bunch of colored pens and markers, and a scratch pad.

Before you start marking up your list, read through it to see what categories suggest themselves. (Again, see the end of the post for some start-you-off suggestions.) Jot the categories on the scratch pad as you go. Be as messy as you want. All you’re doing is making your thought process visible.

When this list feels pretty much complete, grab a highlighter and use it to mark through all the to-do’s in one category. Use a second color for the next category, and keep going until you run out of highlighter colors. (What’s up with that, people at Sharpie and Sanford? Six isn’t nearly enough!)

Then you’ll need to get a little creative with your opaque colors–maybe red squares, blue circles, green arrows, etc. in the left margin for different categories. (The six-year-old in me just piped up with, “Pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, green clovers–and new blue diamonds!”)

Now Everyone Back in the Pool

Notebook people? (“Here!”) Computer people? (“Here!”) Card people? (“Here!”)

Good. We’re actually going to pause here, because even though you physically have the same notebook, electronic document, or stack(s) of cards you started with, you’ve just done a lot.

Now is a good time to test-drive your categories for a bit, see if they work for you, and make any needed adjustments. For now, keep adding items to your list in their brand-new and wonderfully appropriate categories, and removing them as you do them.

In the third and (possibly) final post in this series, I’ll cover how to turn these categories into a coherent Outboard Brain that works for you. In the meantime, here’s a list of a few broad categories to kick-start your thinking process. Of course you’ll have categories that are unique to you, but these are fairly common. I’ve added a few notes to some of them. Don’t feel you need to use all of these, either–use the list as a springboard for your mind.

• Things to be done on or by specific dates (Don’t wait on these–go ahead and enter these on whatever calendar or tickler system you use now so that they don’t fall through the cracks.)
• Urgent Items
• Errands/Shopping Lists
  
• Active Projects/In Process
• Delegated to/Waiting For (For anything others are working on that is important to you or in which you’re a key player.)
• Spouse or Key Relationship (Things to discuss or do together.)
• Family (Ditto the above.)
• Business Ideas (Things you want to research and/or implement.)
• Finances
• Health
  
• House
• Books to Read/Movies to Watch/Etc.
• Fun Things to Do (In my opinion, this is a wonderful list that everyone should have!)
• Recurring Events (Birthdays, anniversaries, key action reminders, etc.)
• Someday/Maybe (This is the category for those dreams and long-range plans. It’s a catch-all so you don’t forget about them and can review them periodically. Writing it down does not mean you’re committed to doing it.)

Holy categorization, Batman! See you next time.

(image courtesy of ex novo)

In the comments section of my last blog post, Barbara raised the question, “Why do I rebel against my own to-do lists?” That sparked a lot of thinking for me. So now I’ve got a series of posts about to-do lists . . . yep, you’ve got it. On my to-do list.

Why do we even use to-do lists, anyway? What’s in it for us other than stress because we never seem to cross enough things off of them? Because when they work, to-do lists actually help us relax. Yes, that’s right. Relax.

“Huh?” you say. (That’s one of the things I like about you. You’re so articulate.)

Allow me to explain. Oh, and to be clear, I’m using “to-do list” as a catch-all term. For you it might mean anything from a hastily scrawled sticky note to a complex, category-driven application on your computer or PDA. Whatever works for you. (Or doesn’t work, as the case may be—don’t worry, we’ll get to that in future posts.)

A to-do list is really nothing more than an outboard brain.

Early humans simply didn’t need them. Imagine our cave-dwelling ancestors:

1. Hunt animals.
2. Gather plants.
3. Gather wood, feed fire.
4. Cook.
5. Eat.
6. Mate.
7. Repeat.

The absurdity is clear. And it’s not just the fact that leaves and charred twigs didn’t make very durable personal planners, either. Our ancestors knew what to do because it was all about survival—what was necessary was also pretty darn obvious.

Ironically, though their lives were physically demanding and dangerous, hunter-gatherer societies also spent far less time fulfilling their basic needs than we do.

Even later agricultural societies had more leisure time. Yes, people had to work long, back-breaking hours during crucial periods such as planting and harvesting. But for most of the year, they could finish up work in the fields and kick back with jars of mead at the end of the day, telling stories around the hearth fire. There was no, “Sorry, honey, the feudal lord asked me to work late again tonight, and on the way home I need to get gas for the mule and pick up your doublet and hose from the dry cleaner. Can you make sure little Sigismund gets to spear-throwing practice on time?”

No, it’s only our modern lives that have become this complex, and overrun with demands on our time that often feel completely overwhelming. To deal with it all, we need to find external ways to capture our commitments, because our brains simply aren’t wired to hold all that information and feed it to us as we require it. Our ancestors didn’t need it, so we didn’t evolve that way. And biological evolution lags so far behind technological evolution that we needed to call in reinforcements.

Thus, the humble to-do list was born. (It has grown up to become far less humble in its adolescence, like most teenagers, but that’s a story for another day.)

By writing down the things you need to accomplish, and by when, you free your mind from what author and productivity expert David Allen calls “open loops.” Even if you’re not aware of it every moment, these open loops sap your energy and concentration simply by remaining undone, because at some level you’re aware of all that incompleteness hanging over your head.

Then, if you don’t find some way of recording these open loops outside your own gray matter, not only do you feel anxious about all of your undone tasks, you’re also anxious (again, this may not be fully conscious) that you might forget about them. It’s a double-whammy of worry.

Keeping a to-do list—and keeping it more or less current—eliminates the second of those two worries. Unfortunately for those of us who are planner and system addicts, Writing it All Down (or Getting it All Entered) is not synonymous with Getting it All Accomplished. (“What? You mean I bought this gorgeous new Franklin Covey planner in rich buttery nut-brown leather with a personalized monogram, and filled in all my calendar items and things to do, and it’s not going to do them for me??? I want my money back!”)

Sorry, you still have to do the things yourself. But getting some clarity around what those things are, and getting them out of your head and onto a list, gives you an incredible feeling of relief. Sometimes you feel overwhelmed with everything you think you have to do, and when you see it all written out in ink or pixels, you realize there’s less of it than you thought.

Or that the truly urgent stuff is doable, and the rest of can be deferred for a while with no harm.

Or that what you thought was a huge, icky, complicated project actually has a set of steps you can take in an obvious and logical order.

Or that everything looks a bit more manageable than you were anticipating.

Or that there are things you really, truly don’t have to do. Now, and maybe ever.

Or a combination of all of these. Whatever you discover, somehow just being able to see it in written form helps you wrap your mind around it all. And the sense of relief is amazing.

Want to try it?

Throughout this series of posts, I’ll offer some concrete, practical suggestions that will let you feel the relief that comes from having an Outboard Brain of some sort. Give them a test drive and let me know what works for you, what doesn’t, whether you have any questions, etc. As always, I’d like to make this a real conversation, not just me doing all the talking . . . uh, writing.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do a brain dump. You can do this in one of two ways, though I recommend the second one.

Way #1: Use a small notebook.

Way #2: Use a stack of index cards.

I recommend the index cards, because while this exercise is only about capturing your thoughts, next time we’ll deal with categorizing them. And that’s easier to do with a stack of cards you can shuffle around than a list you can’t. (Helpful hint and Alternate Way #2: When I did this recently, I cut some blank cardstock down to the size of business cards, wrapped a rubber band around them, and had a very portable working Outboard Brain.)

Now, take 15 minutes or so when you can be undistracted. Transfer the contents of any current to-do lists to your new TOB (Temporary Outboard Brain). Don’t forget that receipt from lunch where you jotted down the errands you want to run this weekend, the sticky notes hanging precariously from the bottom of your computer, and any other spots where pesky to-dos like to hide.

Then, do a brain-dump from scratch, as much as you can think of off the top of your head. What’s in your short-term memory because you weren’t near your computer or Blackberry or a notepad when you thought of it? What has come up in the last few hours that you haven’t written down anywhere but want to remember?

Don’t worry about being complete—that’s why you are going to carry your TOB and a writing utensil with you everywhere you go for the next several days. Here’s where the magic happens. Because you have it with you, every time you think of something you need or want to do, add it to the TOB right then and there.*

*Exceptions include while driving, operating dangerous machinery, or in the middle of a heated discussion or amorous encounter.

At first, you may find yourself pausing to jot things down a lot. That’s okay. The flood will slow down and eventually become a trickle. That’s when you’ll know you’re essentially done with your brain dump. Also, don’t worry about keeping your cards or notebook pretty. This is temporary, and doesn’t need to be a work of art. In fact, you might use this as practice in allowing things to be slightly messy!

The next post in this series will talk about what to do with all the to-dos you will have corralled by then. Until then, keep collecting, and trust that even though it’s not yet organized into a Holy and Sacred System, you will still have the most important things at the forefront of your mind. Maybe even the forefront of your notebook (use a highlighter or a special symbol in the margin for urgent items) or card deck (clip the urgent stuff in front).

Meanwhile, savor the feeling of release as you mentally let go and entrust your commitments to something outside of you. Ahhhh . . . feels great, doesn’t it?

I am also a certified master of the to-do list. Hand me twenty pages of tasks, projects and agenda items, and I can slice ‘em and dice ‘em any way you please. I’ve done this with my own lists hundreds of times.

My only problem seems to be with doing the stuff on them.

Even as a child, I carried with me a vague sense of unease about all the things I wanted to do but wasn’t getting around to. (How early does Perfectionitis nauseus set in, anyway? Sheesh.)

Then I learned to make lists. At first they were very simple: Homework. Things to Do. Write it down, do it, cross it off.

Ohhh, yes. The flesh-tingling thrill of crossing things off. There’s no high quite like it. The only thing is, it’s kind of like the old joke about the guy who keeps beating his head against the wall because it feels so good when he stops. You have to keep adding to the lists in order to have more items to cross out.

At first this was no problem. As a classic overachiever, I really was able to plow through many, many things quickly and well. I was invariably praised for this, so that pattern was reinforced strongly. Work hard, earn praise, feel worthy. Want more praise and feelings of self-worth? Work harder.

I became a human doing instead of a human being.

Then came the myriad ways to keep track of it all. I’m low-tech by choice, so I don’t go in for all the electronic gadgetry, but my personal planner addiction began the day I discovered existence of the Day Runner almost two decades ago.

No system has worked for me consistently, though. Even when they gently nudge me into methods of prioritization (ABC-123, context lists, or what have you), I’m still overwhelmed by my own lists because I can’t discriminate. I feel that if I think of it, I have to do it, and that I’m perpetually falling behind in a race I can’t win.

Over the past couple of years, an internal war has raged within me between my Inner Drill Sergeant, who sounds like Anthony Robbins on speed, and my slowly-emerging Self-Nurturer, who tells me that if I don’t learn to ease up and take better care myself, I may very well die. (As in, you know, sooner than I’m meant to.)

Lately the war seems to be escalating. I think it’s because my Self-Nurturer is finally starting to make some solid inroads into my consciousness. The Drill Sergeant is feeling seriously threatened. And I’m sitting in between them, trying to broker a peace and convince myself I’m not developing a split personality.

But some helpful realizations have emerged, too. One of the best is . . .

The power of stopping. Really stopping.

Being who I am, I’ve always seen relaxation, meditation, visualization, and other forms of stress release as just more items for the to-do list. Which automatically brings up resistance, because I already have far too much on the list already. (How am I supposed to fit a conscious relaxation session in between getting home from work, feeding the cats, having something for dinner, running that load of laundry I’ve been putting off for two days, taking a walk to get some fresh air and exercise, working on the five small tasks and two major projects I’ve decided I need to take care of tonight, answering a few time-sensitive e-mails, and taking a shower before collapsing into bed so I can wake up to another overwhelming tomorrow?)

When methods of de-stressing become just another series of items to check off my lists, I’ve learned I’m never going to get around to them.

But I’ve discovered that when I allow myself to truly stop—to rest for a while because my body, mind and spirit want it, not because it’s an agenda item to be ticked off—I do experience genuine relief.

It’s a subtle distinction, and I’m not even sure I’m expressing it adequately.

My habitual way feels more like:

“Get home from work—check. Feed cats—check. Go upstairs and sit on bed; close eyes and do creative visualization for 15 minutes—check. Start load of laundry—check.”

My new way, which isn’t a solid habit yet but which I’m achieving more often now, feels like:

“Hi there, cats! Can I hang out with you while you eat? **Scritch, scritch** (((PURRRRRR))). Okay, upstairs. Stretching out on my bed because it was a demanding day at the office . . . ahh, yes. This floating in between awakeness and a slight doze feels wonderful. General sense of time passing, but no looking at the clock. >>>really stopping everything; a feeling of timelessness<<< Mmm, now I feel ready to engage with the world again. Wow! Look—it’s only been 20 minutes! Better go start that laundry . . .”

Gentler, Nicer. More peaceful. When I can actually manage this type of thing.

I’d be lying if I said I’m getting as many things done this way, but you know what? I’m getting all the important things done.

With jottings to myself scratched on sticky notes, more often than with my latest “productivity system.”

Though I did walk past the Franklin Covey store at lunch yesterday . . .

I suspect the war isn’t over yet.

I’m basically in love with systems. Give me raw data and tell me how you want it organized, and I’ll create a spreadsheet for it. Show me a room full of stuff that needs to be sorted through and prioritized, and let me loose. Keep me stocked with hanging files, manila folders, labels and a color printer, and I’m a happy puppy.

So what’s bad here? Nothing at all—as long as I have the time and energy to keep up with the sheer volume of stuff that lands in my life, needing to be organized and productivized. And I almost never do. The will to handle such things tends to come in waves—I’ll find myself riding a wave of get-organized energy, and I’ll spend anywhere from a handful of hours to several days setting up new systems to keep me streamlined and productive and efficient.

Rather than simply using the systems I set up during my last surge of energy.

I think this is because I want all my systems to be perfect. With a contingency plan for every possible input, so that once things are set up and running, I’ll never have to think about them again, upkeep of the system will be minimal, and nothing will ever slip through the cracks on me again.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

There just isn’t enough time in my days to keep everything as together as I think I “should.” And even when I find (or make) pockets of deal-with-it time, I often don’t have the energy for doing whatever tasks I’ve assigned to myself. And my self-esteem slips another notch. And my to-do piles grow.

So I’m super-excited to be taking an e-course with Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works, starting this Monday. It’s called “The True Discipline of Time Management,” although I suspect that it will include lots of good information on stuff management, too.

I participated in one of Cairene’s free telecalls a couple of months ago, and she impressed me enormously with her calmness, confidence, and clarity. She has a knack for systems which I envy tremendously, and I’m really looking forward to learning from her.

NOTE: Darn. I was going to make the name of the class above an active link, but I just checked back and it looks like registration is closed for this time around. The course will, Cairene says, be offered again in the fall of this year. Despite that, Third Hand Works offers a wealth of additional information which you might want to check out, plus Cairene is starting another, different course on June 1 called “The Organic Business Manual.” This was the subject of the telecall I listened to, and the information in that was so helpful I can’t even imagine how amazing the entire course will be.

In the meantime, I’ve gone back to keeping things simple. Each day I jot down things to do as they occur to me on the fly, either in a small spiral notebook (if I know I won’t get to it today) or on a sticky note (if I think I will). A sticky note is unintimidating, and I don’t have to worry about making it look nice. Another cool thing I discovered not long ago is the PocketMod, which I use sometimes, too.

I’ve decided that pretty systems and tools are nice, but workable ones are even better.

Although I’ll probably never stop desiring and trying to find (or invent) a combination of the two.