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The Seven D's - Daring To Discover the Dreamy Details of Designing Your To Do List
by Lynn Cutts

Around now, most of us start to experience an unusual seasonal phenomenon: As quickly as the days grow shorter, our To Do Lists grow longer. They get filled with more and more stuff: winterizing stuff, work stuff, home stuff, holiday stuff, travel stuff, year end stuff. Soon we feel as if we are drowning in stuff that just has to be done right now. We get stressed, tired, exhausted, and cranky. It's hardly the way to welcome in the holiday season.

There's only one solution for it–in addition to chocolate, of course–and I'm sorry, it doesn't involve running away to a tropical island until the madness dies down. That's what the Kranks try to do in the new movie Christmas with the Kranks, based on John Grisham's Skipping Christmas, and it doesn't work for them either. No, what we have to do is take back control of our lists, and our lives. We have to cut that list down to manageable size.

"How?" you say? I'm so glad you asked. Because that's what this Musing is all about.

To start with, before you can trim your list, you have to make one. Start by choosing someplace where you can write down all the chores that you have to do. (I keep my list in a spiral notebook. A client of mine uses a computer spreadsheet. Another uses her PDA. Figure out what will work best for you.) Don't sort it out by categories like "home," "family," "work," "school," etc. Just let it be jumbled together. And don't include appointments over which you have little or no control.

Here's an excerpt from my list (The real list is much, much longer):

put snow tires on
send gift list to parents
send gift list to brother
finish Change One Habit e-book
plan March trip
develop future teleclasses
clean out linen closet
balance business check book
bring in furniture from balcony
find out when family is coming for holidays (call Mom)

replace buttons on black shirt
bug brother about gift lists for kids (call)
buy holiday cards
re-write website copy
develop product survey
write copy for new, First Muse Bank website
write family holiday newsletter
defrost freezer
paint laundry room
write 4 D's essay

There are a couple of advantages to having everything written down. First, it relieves you of that nagging feeling that you are going to forget something important. Then the sheer physical presence of that list (and its length) will remind you to stop and think before you take something else on. Do you really have the time and energy to handle another project right now? Your list is a great reality check. Finally, you've never experienced joy like what you feel when you can actually cross something off that list (which is why I like to write it down in a notebook; then I get the satisfaction of crossing it off. Just deleting it off of a spreadsheet doesn't quite do it for me).

When you've finished the list and shaken the writer's cramp out of your hand, (chocolate may help) you're ready to start cutting it down to size. That's the challenging part. To make it easier, apply the first Four D's to it: Delay, Delegate, Do Less, Delete. Here's how.

For each item on your list, decide if you can:

put it off until after the holidays (or longer) (Delay),
have someone else do it or hire it out (Delegate),
make the task shorter or easier, or combine it with another task (Do Less),
strike it from your list completely (Delete).

Your goal is to cut your list in half–at least.

To help you decide which D to apply, here are a few questions:

Delaying. Ask yourself:

Does this really have to be done now?
Is this my deadline, or somebody else's?
What would it cost me if I put this off for a week, a month, six months, or a year? Can I live with that?

If you decide that you can delay that task, write a date beside it so you'll be sure to get back to it then.

On my list, I decided that I would put off defrosting the freezer, planning the March trip, and cleaning out the linen closet at least until after the holidays.

Delegating. Ask yourself:

Can someone else do this job as well as or better than I can?
If someone else can do this job, but not as well, or not the same way I do it, can I live with that?
How much will it save me, in time, energy, or money, to delegate this task – or to hire it out? How much will it cost me?

Are you going to delegate that task? Great! Write down the name of the person you're delegating to beside it.

I assigned sewing buttons, putting on snow tires, planning the March trip (that one got Delayed and Delegated!) and bringing in the balcony furniture to others. I also decided to turn much of the web site copywriting over to a professional copywriter. While that eliminated a couple of items from the list, it added one: find a professional copywriter. That I could mostly delegate as well to Dawn, my Virtual Assistant.

Doing Less. Ask yourself:

Can I combine this chore or errand with another to save time?
Can I get by with doing less of this chore?
How much of this really needs to be done right now?

Are you going to do less of that chore? Note where you are going to draw the line.

I combined sending our gift lists to my brother and parents with calling them, which saved me a couple of emails. I pared my list of future teleclasses from 12 to 5. I also culled my Holiday card list, which saves me time and money.

Deleting. This is your most powerful option, since it gets tasks completely off that list. Ask yourself:

Will this activity, project, or task be important to me next year? How about in five years? Ten?
Is this activity, project, or task something I will enjoy, learn from, or be positively challenged by?
What is the most likely outcome of this activity, project, or task? Is that something I really want?

If you decide to delete a chore completely from your list, draw a line through it. Remember, you can always add it back later, when things have settled down.

I decided to delete repainting the laundry room. It doesn't look that bad, guests rarely go in there, and it would be a huge chore.

Finally, we get to the fifth D: the actual Do list. By this point, everything left on your list should be a pretty significant Do. In my example, the numbers went from 20 to 8. And we're about to pare it down even more. (By the way, if you didn't cut your list by at least half, run though it again, applying the four D's. This time, be really stringent.)

Go through your new, shorter Do list, and note every chore on that list that you can do in 15 minutes or less, and Do them! On my list, those quick tasks included calling my brother (calling my mother always takes at least an hour) and balancing my business check book. I'm now down to 7 items.

The sixth D is Deadline. Go through what remains on your list, and put a target completion date for each task. Then write those deadlines on the calendar, and pencil in when you are going to work on each specific chore. Calling my mother, for example, is best done in the early evening, but not on Thursdays when she plays Bunco. Finishing my e-book gets Monday mornings, when I'm at my freshest. And so on.

And now you're done! You've just applied the 6 D's to your to do list! Congratulations! You can welcome in the holidays in brighter spirits because you don't have as much STUFF weighing you down.

Oh, and the seventh D? Dark chocolate, of course!