First, a disclaimer…. I think I may be a massive fraud for sharing this alternative to-do list, so I hope you do better than I do.
This last month has been super exciting for me. I’ve started on the path of a new work venture which has the potential to be a wonderful vehicle for making a difference to others and using my skills to their full potential. I’ve also been inspired by working alongside a great bunch of people who I also find wonderful and motivating to work with too.
All this super stuff happening in my work has meant I have been moving into a familiar pattern:
- Piles of washing up building
- Dog not getting walked as much as she’d like (to be fair, have you seen the weather?)
- Hair looking like it belongs to a dishevelled 10 year old girl.
- Forgetting to reply to friends messages / check in with friends.
- Not spending time to plan activities for my son in my spare time
In summary, my life was falling out of balance, and in the meantime, all I was doing was adding to a constantly building To-Do list of work tasks, while also feeling more down on myself for not keeping up with all the other things that are important to me, and give me a sense of ‘on-top-of-it-ness’.
A different kind of to-do list
So instead of continuing to add to my work list, I took a slightly different approach. I drew a circle and divided it up into 4 quadrants, and labelled them based on what a balanced life meant to me: House & Home, Friends & Family, Health & Wellbeing then finally Work & Study – and then to create much shorter To-Do lists in each of these quadrants.
My intention was to build a much smaller Work To-Do, but also make sure that it was balanced out by activities in all the other quadrants that help to keep my life on an even keel.
It definitely worked! For a week at least…. I even got a new haircut out of the back of it, and have been making some time for yoga each morning! Hooray!
This is due to the powerful way that templates can help us to shape how we look at the world around us and view the ways that we can choose to interact with it.
However, I only did the exercise once! And now the dishes are starting to pile up again. So, I’ve created this free printable so that it’s a much easier process for me to repeat – but also to share with you!
Please do download a copy. But also if you are interested in learning how to create visual thinking tools like this (and plenty more!) Do check out my Visual Thinking courses.
There’s one for ‘In Person’ – think pens / paper / flipcharts / wall drawing.
And there’s another one for creating ‘Virtual’ facilitation spaces, graphics and shareables like this one.
Find out more about Gemma’s Visual Thinking for Coaches courses, or book your place here.