Creating a "Get to Do" List

It is common when working on goals to lose sight of the reason why we are doing all this hard work. Oftentimes, it is not intentional but it happens.  

I have used the analogy in the past of running a marathon. There are people that love to run but training for a marathon is hard work. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are; IT IS HARD WORK. Training for a marathon entails many runs of different mileages and often times early in the mornings. You are doing a repetitive task that can easily take a toll on your body. It is common when training for a marathon to feel discouraged at some point in your training and what maybe, in the beginning, started off as “Yay, I just finished running 5 miles” turns into “Ugh I have to run 5 miles”. In the beginning, we can easily be excited about signing up for the marathon but come two or even three months in, and that changes. Any runner who has run a marathon will tell you that is normal and okay. There are runners that hate marathon day and will curse up a storm throughout the whole 26.2 miles and the moment they reach the goal of the finish line be elated and sign up for the next one. There are runners that hated training for the run but LOVED the excitement of the actual marathon day. 

We are all different in how we work towards a goal but too many days of feeling discouraged and losing sight of the goal has an impact on how we tackle it. Now, I am not endorsing that you need to be happy about the hard work all the time but I do encourage you to evaluate whether your goals still match what you want. How I like to do this is by encouraging clients to look at the work through the lens of “I GET TO DO”. 

“I GET to run these 5 miles”

“I GET to attend my graduate class today”

‘I GET to work on this project at work”

‘I GET to clean out my closet for Spring”

These are tasks that can be found on a “To-Do List” and sometimes we speak of the tasks as things we aren’t looking forward to doing. Again, that is okay on some days but encouraging the small shift in perspective can change our mood in a positive way but also, it be a gentle reminder to evaluate if you want to still be working on these goals. 

Do you want to be running those miles? Or did you set that goal for a different reason and now that doesn’t align with you? 

Do you want to be working on that project at work? Why or why not? Do you want to be working at the job you have now? Is it time for a shift? 

Now, there are going to be times we can’t just change our situations. The decision to stop training for a marathon or cleaning out a closet is not on the same level as the reasons for why we work at a certain place or the relationships we have with other people. 

I do believe that a “Get to Do” List can minimally provide some reflection of where you are in your life and if there is needed change. It can bring perspective onto where you are now and where you hope to go even if that change is not going to happen right now. 

Have you heard of a “Get to Do” list? Have you used it before?