Taming the Shit Show
Do these to-do lists look familiar?
Monday’s List
Answer emails
Send invoices
Schedule department meeting
Zoom call with Team
Write article/blog
Create blog ideas
Follow up with Lily’s art teacher
Put together new Executive Package
Text Tracy
Call Kate
Call Mom
Take Lily to Miriam’s
Tuesday’s List
Answer emails
Send invoices
Schedule department meeting
Zoom call with Team
Write article/blog
Create blog ideas
Follow up with Lily’s art teacher
Put together new Executive Package
Text Tracy
Call Kate
Call Mom
Organize play date for weekend
Water garden
Plant cucumber seeds
Write coursework
Prep for Group
Wednesday’s List
Answer emails
Send invoices
Schedule department meeting
Zoom call with Team
Write article/blog
Create blog ideas
Follow up with Lily’s art teacher
Put together new Executive Package
Call Kate
Call Mom
Plant cucumber seeds
Write coursework
Prep for Group
Make intros for Meg
Organize play date for weekend
I sent a text and watered the garden? What?! I am really, really busy. I work hard. I am available. I am helpful. I am successful!
Something seems terribly wrong with these lists. They never, ever, ever, ever GO AWAY. And funny enough (not funny ha ha) I’m not even the serious List Maker in our family. Everyone knows that’s Eric.
I. am. a. total. shit. show. (Imagine my go-to emoji here….lady with hand on face - universal gesture of “oh for fuck’s sake”)
I am a Coach. An Executive Coach. I teach Mental Fitness. I teach Leadership.
Can you imagine?
Potential New Client, “Kamrin it’s been so nice meeting you. I’d love to schedule a session”.
Me, “Great! I’m so happy to get started with you. Let me just add sending you a contract and invoice to MY LIST”.
Insert earlier described universal emoji.
Luckily for me, (and for my husband, my family, my clients, my friends and anyone who may have the joy of coming into contact with me), I have a fantastic therapist who specializes in Adult ADHD (which I discovered having at age 44). AND luckily for me, as mentioned, I am a Coach and I teach Mental Fitness.
The combination of these things has been life changing for this working-mom, female executive, turned entrepreneur.
I thought everyone’s to-do lists looked like mine. The same, every damn day. My husband’s sort of do. Or at least I see that he has paper and he writes words down. And his lists never seem to go away either. I mean I have been living with his “get shit done lists” for 23 years.
The lists I make DON’T WORK. Mine are different than Eric’s.
Mine don’t work because I’ve left out the key step of putting on the guardrails of time.
I’ve left out the fact that even though I get up at 5:30 in the morning and have the luxury of “setting my own schedule” I also have specific responsibilities to myself (ie. exercise, showering, eating) and my family (i.e. waking up Lily, making her breakfast, driving her to school, making sure Eric doesn’t only eat packaged junk. Not necessarily my responsibility, but I have taken it on for the sake of his hopeful longevity).
I have appointments and many Zoom calls set during the day. I have to do the actual business of running a business and I have to do the actual Coaching of being a Coach. I have to do the mothering and wife-ing that go along with being a Mom and a Wife. And the friending and daughtering of being a friend and daughter.
The hyper achiever in me puts all of that on crack. And I’ve conveniently left out the Avoider and the Pleaser. I do LOVE a good challenge.
There are time markers in the day which need to be accounted in order for things to actually get crossed off the list.
That may seem obvious to most people, to Eric for example, but not to me. I wasn’t taking the crucial step of moving the items OFF OF the to-do list ON TO a Calendar. Therefor I allowed my to-do list to grow, because I had never committed to doing any of it in the first place - not in the form of actual time.
What I had to learn in order to actually “get shit done” and to manage my hyper achiever / pleaser / avoider was to schedule the things on my to-do list INTO my calendar. And my calendar has to show my existing time-bound commitments. It is the only possible way for me to be productive and achieve health and balance.
A realistic list looks like this:
5:30 up, coffee, PQ reps
6:00 exercise, check emails if walking on treadmill or on bike until heartrate is to a point where it needs music
6:45 wake up Lily, jump in shower, get dressed
7:15 Make sure Lily is dressed, make her breakfast and lunch
7:40 Leave house for school drop off
8:00 Finish getting ready
8:30 Make/eat breakfast
8:45 Create list of blog ideas/check emails
9:45 Schedule Meetings for week
10:00 Break - STAND THE HELL UP - do some PQ reps
10:05 Write to Lily’s art teacher, Text Tracy, Text Mom
10:30 Client Coaching Session
12:30 Lunch/move around a bit/ PQ reps
1:00 Zoom call with Potential Client
2:00 PQ reps/ Stand up and move
2:05 Write notes from Coaching Session and Potential Client Call
2:40 Race off to pick up Lily from school
3:15 Lily snack/organize next two hours
3:30 Client Coaching Session
5:30 Write up Coaching notes
5:45 Head upstairs to make dinner (this is my optimized goal)
6:30 Eat dinner/ clean up dinner
7:30 Lily shower/ I check emails
8:00 Family TV time (addicted to Flash!)
9:00 Lily bed/story-time
9:30 Maybe get up and check emails…maybe watch a show with Eric….maybe fall asleep with Lily
It’s humbling. There is a lot on the list that didn’t make it to the day. But that is why I have to schedule that list INTO the calendar. And then what doesn’t get done on the calendar/list gets put into a new slot on a new day in between set appointments.
It’s a skill. And it takes serious dedication. It HAS to make me think before I jump to say “Sure I’ll do that for you!”. And that doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me a reasonable person with optimized Executive Function.
It takes away the illusion that I’m actually going to get to everything on my list TODAY. And that is hard for the hyper achiever/pleaser in me to accept.
It is also freeing. It puts the things on my list into the time slots that are available in between serving my family, serving myself and serving you. It gets the things done.
It just turns out that things take time. And you apparently have to plan for that time if you are ever going to get them done.
Our internal self sabotaging habits keep us making the same mistakes over and over again, (i.e Sure! I’ll do that!). But once saboteurs are identified they can be tamed and re-trained.
And it takes practice. As any of you who have been following me for awhile know, time and to-do list management and efficiency are common themes.
And that’s ok with me. Practicing something, moving forward bit by bit, is much more exciting than not moving at all.
#kamrinhubancoaching
