For this week’s Mental Sunshine I want to remind you of a tool you can use to help you power through your to-do list.
If you’re anything like me (and most of the people I know), you have an endless to-do list, where you might manage to tick a couple of things off each day, but you always seem to add more onto the bottom of it.
Sound familiar?
I heard this week that “burnout” is characterised by that feeling you get from never reaching the bottom of your to-do list.
Just the constant feeling that there’s still so much to do
And often, when you’re starting to feel overwhelmed by your to-do list, you find it harder to actually get anything done.
Perhaps the job at the top of your list is one you really don’t like doing, so you keep putting it off .
But now it’s been there a while, and it’s becoming urgent.
We all know that feeling of having spent a whole day working, but feeling like we’ve not actually achieved much.
Definitely more mental cloudiness than sunshine!
This is where the Pomodoro Technique can be really helpful.
Officially, the Pomodoro Technique involves setting a timer for 25 minutes, followed by taking a 5-minute break
The idea is that you work just for those 25 minutes, and then you can have a rest
But if the job you’re trying to get done makes 25 minutes seem like hours, you can always shorten the timer!
This is great if you have a job you need to get done, but the thought of it just makes your brain want to go off and do literally anything else.
You can stand 5-10 minutes of just about anything, can’t you?
Even a tax return…
So set your timer, do your short burst of work, and then take a break.
You can use this technique – with the timer at whatever length you feel appropriate – to bash through a really long list.
The key is to have a little break in between.
They help you to feel like you’re not just banging your head against a wall for hours at a time!
And at the end of the day, you might even find you’re closer to the bottom of the to-do list than you expected.
When it feels like there’s too much to do it can make us feel frozen, like we can’t even get started.
Using the Pomodoro Technique – or a version of it – can help us to at least get started.
Do you have any other tricks you use to help yourself to be (and feel) more productive?