To-do lists are emotional little things. They are so much more than meets the eye - and you know this by how they make you feel when they get messy, scribbled-on, tattered, or lost. I've noticed that my clients have a lot of gunk in their heads about what a to-do list should look like, as well as excuses for why theirs a crazy-maker.

People work off of lists that are WAY too long. Now wonder when you sit down with a few precious minutes or hours, you get scrambled, stressed, and turn to the fast tasks with little reward. The big, satisfying, lucrative tasks that make you proud of yourself and move you forward get lost and don’t get done.

Most people are working off of to-do lists that are way to long and messy! When I'm brought in to help someone organize their office, often the conversations bring up their feelings of overwhelm in many areas of life. When I hear this, I can usually predict that a too-long, too-scattered, or too-messy to-do list is lurking.

When a client feels utterly overwhelmed by all they have to do, they're usually holding too much in their heads. Their days are full of "Oh sh*t! I also have to ____!" moments. When I walk into this, I love to help them to literally see all they have to do. Instead of it overwhelming them even more, they are always relieved to get it all out in the open.

This week I gave a talk on work-life balance to a team in Afghanistan - virtually of course! This was a new speaking topic for me. Corralling the lessons into a presentation made me realize how much this topic is woven into my day-to-day work with clients.

This summer I thoroughly enjoyed reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I actually don’t read nearly as many productivity books as you’d might expect.