How to Stop Worrying About What You’re NOT Doing

“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.”
- Glenn Turner

You have too much to do, and you know it. You know you’re not going to be able to finish everything on your todo list today.

You know that, as usual, there will be some things you feel you really NEED to do but won’t be able to get done.

And of course, because you don’t cross those things off your todo list – you worry

You lay awake at night thinking about them.

You know they’re still going to be there for you tomorrow morning.

When you’re driving to work, they’re taunting you, and nagging at the back of your mind.

These gremlin tasks never leave you alone.

Even at social events, when you’re making small talk, all you can think about is “when can I leave so I can get to sleep so I can get up early so I can finish … ” well, that thing that you probably aren’t actually going to do tomorrow anyway.

You may not even really be sure what you’re supposed to do – but it’s on your todo list, and you feel like you have to do it

Fear not: after much research, trial & error, and plenty of internal worrying of my own, I discovered the solution – courtesy of David Allen.

Take It Off My Todo List

The solution? I take it off my regular todo list, and I instead throw it on the @Someday list!

The @Someday list is a list of things that I’ll get around to “someday” – if I feel like it. Now you might be thinking to yourself: “But then it may not get done!”

That’s true – but right now it’s not getting done anyway. And worse, because you’re spending time worrying about it, there are other tasks that probably aren’t getting done either.

I’ve talked about this before, and here’s why it’s so important:

“[I]f you don’t explicitly decide what is on your @Someday list, you implicitly put everything you aren’t actively working on on it”
- from my article, Why Our New Year’s Resolutions Are Doomed Before We Even Begin – And What We Can Do About It

Translation: if you don’t de-prioritize something, you’ll de-prioritize everything, and you will struggle to get anything done.

What Happens Once It’s On The List?

Stop worrying about the task or project. Once you move an item onto the @Someday list, put it out of your mind. Focus on the tasks remaining on your todo list.
Review the @Someday list infrequently. Do not review this list more than once a week. I review it once a month, and sometimes even less often.
If it has to be done by a certain time frame, take it off the list. If you are worried about something slipping through the cracks, then it does not belong on the @Someday list: the @Someday list is meant for projects I consciously decided were not important enough to me to actively spend time on until I had time. Consider them tabled indefinitely.

Why Does This Work So Well?

These are items I wasn’t going to get around to doing anyway – why worry about them? Instead of worrying and beating myself up over all those things I’m NOT doing (which by the way, had I worried about them, would have left me a mess and STILL would not have been done) – I can put that energy to use on the things I AM doing

What’s more productive:

Worrying about something you aren’t doing
Doing something that matters to you

Worrying just feels like work because it’s so draining – but the difference between worrying versus taking action is that the only thing worrying accomplishes is burning up precious time in your day, while action moves you one step closer to your goals.

Stop worrying – throw those projects you aren’t doing onto your @Someday list, take action on the important tasks you are actually spending time on – and start making real progress towards your goals.

I dig into the concepts of taking action, and conserving your energy to work on tasks that are important to you in detail in my ebook, How To Stop Wasting Your Time And Start Accomplishing Your Goals

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