Do you ever sit back at the end of the day and feel like you got absolutely nothing accomplished? Do your to-do lists seem to go unchanged for days at a time? Man! I hate when that happens! It seems to be happening to me an awful lot lately. I thought that it was because my kids are home from school for the summer.
My husband, being the wonderful and supportive guy that he is, reminded me that I actually get a ton done during the day. He often tells me that he doesn’t know how I do it all. I just look at him like he’s on drugs because I don’t see whatever it is that he sees. Alright… enough bragging about my husband… that wasn’t my point…
There are even days that I give myself a hard time about writing on the subject of “life balance for the work at home mom.” Yea, I know how its supposed to work and I’ve actually been able to accomplish this miracle once or twice in the past, but in reality I’m just as disheveled as the next mom.
So, I have these to-do lists and they aren’t helping me so much. Why? In order to research that question, I started writing down stuff next to my to-do list that I actually did during the day. An amazing thing started to happen. I began to realize how much I actually was getting done. It wasn’t the stuff on my to-do lists that I still needed to do, but at least it gave me back my feeling of accomplishment.
I wasn’t giving myself credit for all the time I spent on things that didn’t have a visible result. Getting the dishes done or putting away laundry had a visible result. I knew I had accomplished something. Creating a web page or a banner, sending an invoice, receiving a payment… all tangible results. What I kept forgetting to see was the hours I was spending following up on healthcare benefits, doing free website consultations, negotiating home financial issues, networking, etc. How empowering!
Now my to-do lists have two columns. The left column is the actual daily to-do list. The right column is the got-done list. For example:
| To Do | Done! |
| research Adword campaigns | |
| post a new blog entry | |
| call cable company | |
| wash whites | laundry done |
| do dishes | dishes done |
| make chiro appt | |
| called insurance co (45 mins) | |
| website consultation (30 mins) | |
| took kids to park (1.5 hours) |
I still have to get my priorities in order and start doing what I scheduled to get done, but at least now I feel a lot better about my day! Look at this… I’m even more balanced than I realize. 
Give this a try. Let me know how it works for you.
LOL! Still didn’t give myself enough credit. I did 2 website consultations, finished up a website, called our flex benefits company and I exercised yesterday too!
Way to go, K.C.
I enjoyed your list!
Should probably do one of my own, LOL!
KC – I have learned that my to do list HAS to have “markers” to indicate which ones to work on first – order of importance – otherwise I will just pick the items that I want to do. So the A,B,C’s come in to play. i.e. A most important – B kind of important – C no big deal of I don’t get it done that day. It really helps! What I don’t get done on my list I carry forward to the next day and up the letter to make sure I get the task done. Maybe this method will work for you also!
S