Monday, January 3, 2011

TO DO Lists - Positive Goal Reinforcements

I recently read a tweet that said If you're not finishing your "To Do" list, you're basically doing something wrong. I wholeheartedly...disagree. A few years ago I sat down and created a To Do list for everything I thought I wanted to accomplish in the next 18 mos. It was a substantial list I must say, with more than 50 items. I pinned it to my bulletin board and at least glanced at it a few times a week. A few weeks into it I noticed I had crossed off a few items. Yay me! What I saw was what I had accomplished, not what I hadn't. Two years later, after I had long put the list away and gone on with something else in my life, I found it again. No, I hadn't lost 45 lbs (#5 on the list) and I hadn't climbed Mt. Whitney (#22), but I had paid off my car, put $2500 in my savings account, gotten my passport and spent 10 days in Scotland and Ireland without charging anything to a credit card. Finally tally: I had put a line through 65% of my list. I couldn't help but smile...and wonder, how much would I have accomplished if I had never made a list at all?

Maybe now is a good time to start a new list...