Feeling Good About What You're Not Doing

From my experience, a majority of the stress most people feel comes from not too much to do, but from broken agreements with themselves. You can fool all the people all the time, but you can't fool yourself for one second. When you tell yourself you ought to do something, and you don't do it, you suffer the slings and arrows of self-doubt, frustration, depression, and the fatigue of overwhelm.

If that's true, how do you get rid of the stress?

There are three options:

(1) Don't ever make any agreements with yourself. You'd lighten up a ton if you'd just lower your standards!

(2) Complete your agreements. Wow, think how you'd feel if you totally finished your list of to-do items! Of course, within three days you'd have a bigger list, from all the enthusiasm and energy you'd generate from finishing the current one.

(3) Re-negotiate your agreements. I think this is one of the master keys for personal sanity into the future. When you think about all the things you might/should do this afternoon, and decide that you want to spend time with your daughter or take a swim instead, you can then do it with a clear head.

Here's the big problem: It's impossible to renegotiate agreements with yourself that you can't remember you made!

Here's the solution: Keep lists, folks. The key lists are Projects, Calendar, Next Actions, and Waiting For. Look at them as often as you need to. Not so that you have to do everything. On the contrary, so you don't have to do everything. You can only do one thing at a time. You can either feel good about what you're doing, or awful about all the things you're not doing. Your choice.

You'd just better know everything you're not doing, and be fine with that, before you're really free to be fully anywhere at all.

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You can find out more about David Allen and GTD.

The David Allen Company is a professional training, coaching, and management consulting organization, based in Ojai, California. Its purpose is to enhance performance and improve the quality of life by providing the world's best information, education, and products in the fields of personal productivity and work/life balance.

Comments

[MichaelMuscat]

This article resonated with me, but I think I'd take it a step further. Allen focuses on the daily promises we make to ourselves, but I'd say it's the bigger promises we make about the future we want to have, the (sometimes second) careers we want to pursue, the people we want to know and love. These larger promises, when they go unfulfilled, are the ones that create stress and set the stage for depression. The cumulative effect of daily promises that never reach fruition might take its toll, but it's not my failure to work out at the gym one day or to make a phone call that make me feel despair. It's that long-unfulfilled promise I made to myself to really make an impact on the world; that's the one that gets me. Where's my law career? Where's my future as an important writer? As time passes and these dreams seem to fade, we seek fulfillment elsewhere, sometimes in destructive behavior.

[Rockyman]

Yes, it can be the "larger promises" when unfulfilled that can "create stress" and possibly "depression". What I have found that helps avoid this is to realize these goals are not what define my success as a person. They are just goals that I strive for, that can help direct me and are not in themselves critical to achieve. I suppose I dismiss my own goals a bit and try to see what I have achieved. The "cup half full" approach. Goals can be nearly infinite and therefore unattainable. I shoot for the stars but settle for the moon!

[wmbear]

MAJOR...

I was trying to figure out an organizing strategy like the Four Lists. No more simple "To Do" lists for me! Many thanks, David, for that simple (but by no means obvious) tool....

[Riverwolf]

Number 3--re-negotiating--is a must. Sometimes you have to reorder your priorities, if only temporarily. Sometimes it's more important, right then, to play with the cat, call your mother, snuggle on the sofa with your honey--or check out Huffington Post instead of doing your job!

[CitizenFace]

I haven't made a New Year's resolution in years for pretty much this reason. If I'm really ready to do something, I don't need to resolve to do it because I'm already motivated enough to get it done. Conversely, if I want or feel like doing something without being certain that I'm ready for it or absolutely capable of it, I don't bother making promises--better to just go with the flow, see how things go.

[rbspickles]

When I took on the one day at a time attitude, much of the stress and worry went away.

[Rockyman]

Not only do we feel "awful" about the "broken agreements to ourselves", we also feel discontent about the "things" we currently don't have and are convinced will bring us the allusive happiness we desire. That adds additional stress. I propose we learn to relish what we have AND be present in each and every moment. Happiness is actually more easily available than our rampant consumerism has led us to believe.

[jdoiter]

My grandmother had it right when she taught us a little poem:

If a task is set for you
Don't idly sit and view it
Nor be content to wish it done
Begin at once and do it.

[WandaBooneshaft]

This little article speaks volumes. I adopted this philosophy when I made my 2008 New Year's resolutions in late December. Then I heard that most people brake their resolutions by Jan. 9. How shallow! Here it is almost March, and so far so good. He's right, "the slings and arrows of self-doubt, frustration, depression, and the fatigue of overwhelm" seem to be melting away. Finally, success!

[dora_rice]

me and me can't agree....that's the core of our problem....but we are working on it...