Today I’m going to share another amazing tool with you that I picked up from Oliver Burkeman. I’ve been using it for a while and it had such a powerful effect on me and how I perceive my work.
You are already enough
For many years of my professional life, work has been a pretty reliable source of validation for me. Working hard and getting praise for it has fed this hungry ghost for many years. Making mistakes or getting things wrong deeply affected my self-worth and my response to it was to work harder. It took me a long time to become aware and then escape this vicious cycle.
Today, I believe that this behaviour is actually quite common. We feel like we have to constantly prove ourselves and earn our place to be here. It starts to define us and we only ever feel good enough and deserving to be here if we DO things.
If this is something you are struggling with too, let me remind you:
You are already enough, you are worthy, you belong here and none of your doing or not doing is going to change that.
Of course, to believe this about yourself and to eventually embody it is easier said than done. Perhaps the metaphor and subsequent tool that I’m going to share here can support you on this journey.
The bank account of your productivity
Think about your productivity as a bank account.
You get up in the morning and make a list of all the things that you have to do. In this scenario, if you think that you have to earn your worth through your work, then your productivity bank account starts off in the red. You now have to spend your day making many deposits to get you back to zero and to feel like you are worthy. However, the reality is that we rarely get to this point. We are often still in the red by the end of the day and we stare at our To Do List thinking about what’s wrong with us. A little voice inside of us gets fed yet again telling us that we are just not good enough.
So let’s challenge that.
Now imagine that you start your day with zero in your productivity bank account. This means that you already know you are enough and your achievements throughout the day are not going to change that.
The Done List
This is where the Done List comes in. When I first heard of it, I thought it was just another ordinary list to make you more productive.
But this list is different. It’s super simple yet incredibly powerful.
Start your Done List by recording all of the things you do during your day (I keep mine in Excel). This means once you complete an item from your To Do List move it to your Done List. Also, add any items that you end up doing that are not on your To Do List. In just one day, you will most likely be surprised by how many things are actually on your list. Over time, this list keeps getting longer and longer.
There are no rules to the Done List. The tasks you add to the list can be super simple like making your bed to more complex tasks such as working on a marketing strategy.
Why is this list so powerful? Because it shows you all the things you already completed. It helps you beat procrastination by doing small tasks to get you moving and since you know that you are already enough, you are lowering the stakes and nothing you do (or don’t do) is going to change that. Eventually, it will also help you to make more conscious choices about how you use your finite time on this planet by asking yourself ‘Do I really need to do this task? Can someone do it for me? Is it bringing me joy? Is there something else I want to do right now?’