Overwhelmed by your master to do list? You need THIS

To do list organization and task management tools are all good and fine, but if you continuously add things to your master to-do list without consideration for whether or not they've truly earned a spot in your task management system, no amount of task management skills are going to keep you from getting overwhelmed. By the end of this video, you'll know my number one strategy for escaping this cycle and ensuring that your to-do list gets and stays manageable, meaningful, and fulfilling.

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.

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Helping my clients overcome their overwhelm is one of the most important things I do inside my coaching program. Now it's your turn. Let's get started.

Allow me to introduce you to the method that I call the 'Red Velvet Rope' for your to-do list.

The basic concept behind this red velvet rope is that it's a boundary between the world and your master task list. Once established a red velvet rope will ensure that only VIP tasks end up on your to do list. Keeping it not only more meaningful and fulfilling, but also help eliminate overwhelm.

Before we dive into what type of boundaries to establish for your red velvet rope and how, I'm betting that this entire concept might be bringing up a lot of resistance for you, because that's what I've experienced with my clients. This resistance tends to boil down to some variation of, "But everything on my overwhelming to-do list IS important and necessary!"

If that's how you're feeling right now, I hear you. I see you. I'm not going to tell you to delete important and necessary things from your to-do list.

What I am going to do is invite you to reconsider what important and necessary means for you.

Here's my hunch. If your to-do list is massive, contains all sorts of things that vary widely in scale, (for example: recurring tasks such as: take out the trash, do the dishes, or feed the cats; to finally get that one picture framed and hung on the wall; to organize all the paperwork in the house - and for that matter, declutter everything in your home and your life; to getting a new job; to finally writing that novel; all the way back to get a haircut, go get an oil change, or schedule an electrician to come out and finally fix that one light). If your to-do list contains anything and everything that could possibly have any importance in your life, it's almost by definition going to be overwhelming.

Especially for those of us who are people-pleasers, hypervigilant, neuro-divergent, or have depression, anxiety, or a history of trauma. Because those are the people who I find hold the most resistance to putting up a red velvet rope around their to-do list.

Because those are the same people who tend to resist establishing any boundaries in their lives at all.

Because at some point in their lives, if not repeatedly, these people learned that establishing boundaries, let alone enforcing them, wasn't safe. The tendency to people please (otherwise known as the autonomic nervous system fawn response), the tendency to be hypervigilant, and the tendency to exert as much control over every possible area of their life; these are all simply coping mechanisms these people use - often unconsciously - to ensure their own safety.

So if you had a strong negative response to my suggestion that you establish a red velvet rope for your to do list, it might be because subconsciously you saw that as me telling you to do something that put your safety at risk. I want to assure you that's not what I'm inviting you to do. I will never ask you to do something to risk your safety. Instead, this and a lot of what I coach around is about inviting you to re-evaluate what you actually need to do to be safe now. So you can make better choices for yourself going forward.

I know that was a lot. So if you feel personally called out by everything I just said, let me know down in the comments.

What your red velvet rope will look like and how it will function can vary from day to day and impact some tasks differently than others. The ultimate point of a red velvet rope is to ensure that your to-do list remains manageable, meaningful, and fulfilling; so that when you're tackling items on your to-do list, you know you're making progress on the things that are actually important to you.

This is about proactively living your life as if you're the main character, instead of letting your life live you (where before you know it, you're looking back with regret on all of the time you've wasted on unimportant things).

Your red velvet rope will be unique to you, so instead of giving you a set of arbitrary guidelines, I'm going to give you some examples of how my red velvet rope works for me. The process is simple, however. When I'm evaluating whether or not to remove a task from my list, or a new task has come up and I'm wondering if it should go on my to-do list at all, instead of simply adding it to my list, I stop myself and I ask, "Has this task earned a place on my to-do list?"

Here are some examples from my own life.

So I've had a fair amount of clutter on my living room floor the past month or so. Putting it on my to-do list to clean that up has not happened because I have other things that are much more important to me, and I'm willing to tolerate the minor annoyance that is that clutter.

The fact that I am now in a place where I can let that kind of mess, as it were, just exist in my living space and not use it as a stick to beat myself with is huge for me. It used to not be safe for me to leave clutter lying around. Is it technically unpleasant and annoying to me? Yes. But it's not so annoying that it's greatly impacting me. So I'm letting it stay messy, which allows me more time and energy to do what's actually important to me right now.

Another example is some client work. In addition to my coaching that I do here and with my clients, I also sometimes do one-off writing projects and I have been working on a nonfiction editing and publishing project since last December. I am so close to the end and it has been something that has remained a high priority this entire time. So it has been living on my to-do list, helping to coax me along and to keep going with it.

There was a time not too long ago where a project that long, that extensive, I would just say no to right off the bat 'cause I wouldn't trust myself to finish it. But I have now gotten to the point where I do, and it feels good to prioritize that and to put that onto my to-do list regularly. And so of course that makes it past the red velvet rope.

Whereas cleaning up the darn minor clutter in my living room? That doesn't matter right now.

Another example: working on this YouTube channel. What's interesting is recently to make time to build the course that I've been working on behind the scenes, I decided to switch from an every week uploading schedule to an every other week uploading schedule. In December, I plan on doing videos every week to help launch my course (because the first iteration of my course will be starting sometime in January), but other than that, I plan on sticking with this every other week schedule because it allows me so much more time and capacity to work on other things.

In the distant future when my course is evergreen, I might then have the capacity again to post videos more often, but that's in the future. I'm not pressuring myself to keep up that fast every week schedule, because then the quality of my course wouldn't be nearly as good.

This was an instance of a task coming up against my red velvet rope and it being "Yes, but..." and I just reduced the frequency, so that way there was less expectation there for me.

Another example, super annoying, is renewing my passport 'cause it expires in November. I have no need of a passport right now, so I'm going to wait until such a time as I feel comfortable and safe to go out and get a new passport photo taken by a professional. Because it just sounds like way too much work to try to do that on my own. And also I just, I don't need a passport right away.

So I am using my Notion task management planning system to make sure that I will be reminded in the future to reevaluate, "Oh, do I do the passport renewal now?" instead of it just living on my to do list annoying me every day, it's now scheduled in a different part of my system, so I'm not just being annoyed by a task that I can't complete now (it is just living on my to-do list and screaming in my face and being annoying). Right now, the renew passport, while it has made it into my system, it has not made it past the red velvet rope.

And then finally, the last example I'm going to give is vacuuming. Like many chores for me because of my disabilities, that kind of labor intensive housework is normally really, really hard on me, and because of the vacuum me and my partner used to have, I rarely if ever vacuumed. It was when it became an emergency, essentially. It was bad. We haven't been able to keep up with chores and keep the apartment as clean as it would be nice to have.

I have let that slide for reasons that I shared before, because there are other things that are more important to me and I'm willing to tolerate some minor mess to do the things that are important to me, instead of spending all of my time and energy just to live in a perfectly clean home. Like, that's not worth it to me, that exchange.

But, what we did recently: we got a new vacuum. We got the uh... Dyson cordless V 15 vacuum and mmuahh (blows kiss) magical. It's lightweight, it's quieter, and it's cordless. And I don't have to bend over because it's, it's installed on the wall. I don't have to have to bend over to pick it up and get it going. I don't have to bend over to plug it in. I don't have to bend over to unplug it and then re-plug it into another room. I don't have to bend over to remove the canister to empty it and then bend over to (etc. noise).

With my postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, POTS bending over and standing up again? Really hard on me and it sucks. But now, with our new vacuum, I don't have to do that. Ever! So I can just vacuum if and what I want to, and it is magical. In fact, it is on my list for today after filming. What? That could never happen before.

So that task didn't make it past my red velvet rope until I had met a certain amount of accommodations for myself to make it a doable task, because that kind of stuff is really hard on me, and it was not worth the pain and exhaustion for me to do before, but it's worth it now because I don't experience the pain and exhaustion. It's actually kind of fun.

You know you're an adult when you're excited about a vacuum.

Now that you've heard some examples of what my red velvet rope looks like, let's circle back to one of my earlier points. As you start exploring what your red velvet rope looks like, remember that the more resistance to this process you experience, the more likely it is that you're afraid of relinquishing control. Because you believe that would mean you would no longer be safe.

I invite you to review each task on your overwhelming to do list and sit with the question: Is it safe to let this one go for now?

You can always add it back later. Please note that sometimes the answer will be no, it's not safe to let this go. But for other tasks, a small part of you may offer a different answer, that it is safe to let something go now.

This process will likely feel uncomfortable and I'm inviting you to lean into whatever level of discomfort is tolerable for you right now, and no more. Be gentle with yourself as you reflect on which tasks are truly priorities for you, which ones can get set aside for someday in the future, and which ones can be deleted altogether.

What are you willing to say no to right now so you can stop drowning?

Once you answer that question and find yourself somewhat safe again, you can move on to the question: What are you willing to say no to right now so you can start the thriving?

Just so we're clear this red velvet rope method isn't just a to-do list thing. It's about caring for yourself in such a way that it allows you to take back your agency so you can truly live your life. There is profound healing to be had through this process, so don't rush it.

Before I wrap up today, I also want to talk about the pesky tasks involved with being a human. Yay. These are recurring tasks such as cooking, doing the dishes, taking out the trash and recycling, caring for your pets, doing laundry, and cleaning. These can also include recurring tasks you have to do at work. And finally in this section we'll also talk about tasks that should probably just live on your calendar instead of your to-do list.

I'm at a point where I do a fair amount of things on most days, including: making my bed, doing dishes, maybe also doing laundry or gathering the trash or exercising (not all of them), cooking, and whatever work is on my plate for that day. Is all of that on my to-do list every day however? No! That would be overwhelming for me.

Instead, over the past several years I've worked hard to build daily and weekly routines and systems that have become habit for me, such that I don't have to put in much extra time or effort in planning or making myself get those things done. That way, the things on my to-do list remain VIP's that really matter to me, such as writing the script for this video, taking notes on all the research interviews I did over the past half year, finishing up that non-fiction project for my client, et cetera. I don't have to work to find those important tasks in a haystack of other tasks.

And similarly, for tasks that are important, but I know I will only complete them on or after a specific date? I schedule those on my calendar so they're not cluttering up my to-do list and overwhelming me the rest of the time.

A really great example of this is scheduling my annual skin cancer screening. Because I can't make that appointment a year in advance, I put a reminder on my Google calendar about two to three months out from when I'd like to have the appointment. Then when that reminder comes around, I call my doctor and I scheduled the appointment. Done.

This way the task "schedule skin cancer screening" isn't lurking on my to-do list for nine months, stressing me out and confusing my priorities. It's great. It's magical actually.

Habitual routines, systems, and scheduled tasks all allow my red velvet rope to be that much more powerful, keeping my master to-do list streamlined so that it only contains the things that are truly important, meaningful, and fulfilling for me.

There you have it, the red velvet rope method for keeping your master to do list manageable and then some.

Now, if you also struggle to actually take action on the items on your to-do list, I highly recommend checking out my free masterclass, where I teach you three mindset shifts and one simple three-step system to help you kick procrastination to the curb.

All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.

Check out this post next to learn even more strategies for tackling overwhelm.

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I'll be back in two weeks with another video. See you then. Bye.