Hitting the Reset Button

why I'm returning to the must-do method

Photo by Carlos Alberto Gómez Iñiguez on Unsplash

In my recent behind-the-scenes post about my workweek, I shared that I’ve been running into an issue with scheduling tasks and meetings over blank spaces in my calendar. While this is bound to happen sometimes, I realized that the things I was working on during my scheduled breaks were not actually must-do tasks. I was overworking because I felt like I “should”—not because I actually had to work ahead.

As a productivity scholar, I’m committed to the practice of untangling urgency and scarcity thinking—two key tenets of white supremacy—from the way I approach my work. I want to walk my talk with slow productivity, which requires ongoing reflection and decision-making. When I paused to reflect on why I was scheduling over my breaks, I noticed three things.

One: I’m emerging from a months-long period of fatigue, which I recently discovered was due in part to a deficit in Vitamin D. Now that I’m supplementing Vitamin D and spending more time outside in the nice weather, my energy levels feel more stable than they have in a long time. But I’ve lived with chronic illness long enough to know that my energy levels will eventually dip. It’s hard not to feel like I need to maximize my output in order to “take advantage” of my high-energy days, even though I know that overworking will eventually cause me to burn out.

Two: I think that my inclination to overwork is also due to a fear of financial scarcity that kicked up when a small college I’ve worked for since 2019 was purchased by a bigger university that decided not to renew my contract, lowering my income significantly. Losing this gig means that I’m fully supporting myself with my coaching income right now (which you can learn more about & book in with me here — I’m accepting clients to start in July!). While it’s normal for business owners to experience ebbs and flows in their work, it can still feel tricky when things change.

Three: I sometimes feel guilty ending my workday early. One of my business inspirations is

Jen Carrington

, who has set up her business so she can work 8-10 hours a week. She doesn’t do it in an exploitative way where she outsources her work and underpays people to do it for her. She’s been strategically building her business for years, puts out amazing offerings, and holds her boundaries. While I aspire to Carrington-ize my schedule with blocks of time off in my workdays, I sometimes struggle with actually resting once I’ve checked off my workday to-do list and might resort to “getting ahead” on errands and cleaning. I do this partially because my spouse Kris works a 9-5 schedule from home and I don’t want to feel guilty for lounging around watching TV while they’re busy on work calls and partially because it’s hard to unlearn what Dr. Devon Price calls “The Laziness Lie” in his book, Laziness Does Not Exist:

The Laziness Lie is a belief system that says hard work is morally superior to relaxation, that people who aren't productive have less innate value than productive people. It's an unspoken yet commonly held set of ideas and values. It affects how we work, how we set limits in our relationships, our views on what life is supposed to be about.

The Laziness Lie has three main tenets. They are:

1. Your worth is your productivity.

2. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits.

3. There is always more you could be doing. (15)

When I reflected on these three obstacles—urgency, scarcity, and difficulty relaxing—I had a bit more perspective on what was causing me to overwork. Because my June schedule is already filling up with meetings and to-do list tasks, I knew it would be essential for me to increase my rest and downtime. So I returned to one of my favorite productivity tools: the Must-Do Method.

The Must-Do Method

The Must-Do Method is an approach to the standard to-do list that helps me truly prioritize tasks by deadline and importance. It’s quite simple: once you write your to-do list, be brutally honest with yourself about what really needs to be done right away, do those tasks, and then save the rest of them for tomorrow (starting with your must-dos, of course). You can learn more about the Must-Do Method here.

Throughout June, my Must-Do Method reset will look like:

• Letting Kris know I’ll be taking more breaks and asking them to cheer me on when they see me resting.

• Writing a brain dump of tasks during my Friday afternoon planning session.

• Reviewing that brain dump to identify when each task needs to be started and completed.

• Scheduling my tasks into my bullet journal for the next week.

• Treating each day’s tasks as a must-do list and choosing NOT to work ahead.

Join Me in Must-Doing!

If rest has felt difficult for you recently, I invite you to join me in your own version of this June Must-Do Method reset! What practices might you experiment with to protect the blank spaces in your day?

Take care and talk soon,

Dr. Kate

Photo by Amanda Macchia