An Empowering Way to Look at Your Task List

From to-do lists to today’s joy list

Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash

We all have to-do lists.

For most of us, this list keeps getting longer as the days progress — not because we procrastinate but because more work comes our way.

Sooner or later, we dread looking at this list because of the sheer number of tasks overwhelms us.

Does this experience sound familiar?

I’ve experienced this dread multiple times in the last few years.

I am big on lists. I like the quick rush of dopamine I get from checking tasks off the list, but after a while, it starts to seem like I am a hamster running on a wheel — working hard yet unsatisfied. Running yet staying at the same place.

With a never-ending list of tasks on my plate, my life very quickly started to look like a snow globe — each particle was a task floating around in my brain. As a result, it was easy to lose track of the reason why I was doing it.

So I started to rethink how I do this.

I flipped the thinking from ‘I have to do this’ to ‘I get to do this.’

I get to create

I get to learn and explore

I get to serve