Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Don’t Fall into the “T0-Do List” Trap

Episode Date: February 1, 2017

  We all do it: Make To-Do lists a mile long and then tell ourselves we’ve had a productive day if we’ve checked off a bunch of “stuff” before our head hits the pillow. But is that really the measure of a significant life? In today’s episode I argue that working hard doesn’t necessarily equal growing, and accomplishing tasks doesn’t necessarily equal real accomplishment. I offer a different way to look at your “to-dos” and suggest a series of questions you can ask yourself to ensure you’re getting the balance and sustainable success that brings true meaning to your day – and your life.   

Welcome to Love Life. I'm your host, Matthew Hussey. Now, here's a secret about men that most women don't realize. Men really want to feel manly around you. If you know how to make him feel like a man, he'll want to be around you day and night. So how do you do this? I'm going to give you my five most powerful phrases for making him feel manly around you right after we get into today's topic. I wanted to give you a quick productivity tip today. One of the things that I've found recently has been working for me is to see my day almost as a set of categories where each category is like a thing that I have to fulfill. So for example, there's the education box. Each day I need to

tick off a box that says I've really learned something today. I've educated myself in some way today. Another box might be creativity. You know, what did I create today? Another box might be organization. You know, how did I make my life more efficient today or less cluttered today? Another one might be my relationships. How did I connect with people that matter today? Another one might be health. How did I look after myself today? The reason that I find this useful is it's quite possible to, if you just follow to-do lists or if you don't follow to-do lists at all, to fall into the trap of getting lots of things done, but building a lot of muscle in one area and not building any muscle in another area.

In other words, if I decided to just go and work every day, I might be, I might feel like I've ticked off that box that says I did some hard work today, but that's not the same as growing myself or educating myself. So I could go a whole six months feeling like I'm working hard, but in a way I'm just coasting because I'm not actually adding value to myself. I'm not figuring out better ways of doing things. I'm not reading new books. I'm not exposing myself to better processes. It may be that I am educating myself constantly. Maybe I'm reading a book a day, but the creativity part of me is lacking. I'm not actually creating anything. I'm just studying. I'm just learning, but I'm not creating anything. I'm not producing anything. It may be

that I'm doing, you know, my education box is ticked and my creativity box is ticked, but my relationship building isn't. And therefore, although I'm working very hard, I'm isolating myself from lots of people that matter in my life. So the point about this is we want each day to have some sense of balance and we want it to exercise muscles in different areas, because I really believe sustainable success comes from having every part of that machine that is you working properly. So in other words, if you are being creative each day in some way, if you're producing something, if you're also educating yourself each day, if you're also getting organized each day in some small way, even if it's dedicating 30 minutes to it or an

hour to it, if you're building relationships each day, all of these things are contributed to you having a very well-rounded, well-balanced life, which is strong in every area. And the nice thing is when you write out these categories, you really do get to break your to-do list down into these different categories. And at the end of the day, ask yourself key questions like, what did I learn? What did I create? How did I make my life more efficient or less cluttered today? How did I connect with people that matter today? How did I look after myself today? These are all very important questions. Now, I'm not suggesting that these are the only categories you would have. You might switch these out for some other categories that are important to you. But having these categories is what ensures that at the end of the day, you don't feel like there's some area where you really haven't delivered in today.

And sometimes we go to bed at night with that ugly kind of feeling in our stomach where we feel like, God, I know I did a lot today, but for some reason I still feel like this day didn't matter enough or that I didn't do enough. And it's very frustrating when you work hard and you still have that feeling at the end of the day. But that feeling tends to come when there's an imbalance. And having this categories system allows you to see each day what the imbalance is and correct it for the next day. So that's it. Thank you for listening, guys. Come follow me on Facebook. It's facebook.com forward slash Matthew Hussey. I will see you there. So we started off today talking about the power of making a man feel manly around you. But how do you do this? It can be challenging to strike the balance so that you don't sound patronizing when you do this, which is why I've carefully crafted five perfect phrases that you can say to any man that will make him feel like his best self around you. To download these five phrases,

just go to lovelifepodcast.com forward slash compliments.