Why do I constantly feel behind?
And the framework I use that ended this once and for all
For years I’ve felt like I’m constantly behind.
Never getting enough done during the day, despite checking multiple things off the to-do list each day, it somehow ends up longer than when it started.
Cue the stress.
Cue logging on at night after little one goes down.
Cue continuing to try to band-aid fix this feeling.
Then two weeks ago it finally clicked for me and I found my way off of the hamster wheel…
Sponsor: Default
We’ve come a long way since the days of “A member of our team will be in touch within the next 72 hours” upon a prospect submitting a demo request on a website. Automating the back + forth scheduling so the prospect could pick the date + time for their call upon form completion was a huge step forward.
And now we’re seeing the next one.
Default is levelling this up for organizations by going not just one, but multiple steps beyond this by looking at the overall job to be done and solving for that. So instead of stopping at helping the prospect pick a date + time for the call, here are just a few additional things Default is automating for teams:
Automatic enrichment of the lead + company with information relevant to you
Automatic qualification/disqualification based on pre-determined criteria
Automatically create leads, contacts, activities, and even opportunities within your CRM with the correct info appended
They gave me a sneak peek at what’s coming over the next few months as well, and I’ve got to say, I’m impressed and already working on migrating over to them.
Separating out “snack” tasks
Let’s start by calling out the dopamine culprit that masks progress: the snack tasks.
We all have these. They’re the “little” checkbox tasks that we put on the list simply because we know they’re easy to complete and cross off. AKA, little dopamine hits.
The problem is that I started to let this dopamine prioritize my daily to-do list. I’d check off a whole bunch of things over the day, but then when looking back on what all I did that day, very few were helping to make progress towards the bigger, more impactful, things I knew I needed to get done. And this is where the discrepancy came in with wondering how I could be “doing so much,” while at the same time feeling like I was constantly behind.
I was essentially eating empty calories. Doing a lot of little things to feel “productive,” but few of those contributing significantly towards the larger things I knew I needed to get done.
The question that changed everything
“What 2-3 things do I need to complete (or make progress on) today so that come tonight, I won’t feel stressed or behind?”
Looking at this question, it seems so simple and so obvious. Focus on what needs to be done and do that.
But life happens.
We have our dopamine snack tasks. We get Slack messages, DMs, and emails with requests for our time or help. We have family, friends, and pets seeking attention during the workday. And before we know it, the only things we’ve crossed off the list that day were the small things as we were operating in small time windows.
So, stealing a page from Charlie Munger + his “inversion” model, instead of continuing forward with my daily to-do list that looked more like a wish list, I worked backward to ask, “If I can only complete 2-3 of these, which ones should they be?”
As I end each workday, I now set a “master” task for the next day that contains 2-3 things that are the most important to get to. This allows me to carry momentum from the day I’m wrapping up AND means I don’t have to try to determine what I should be working on when I start up the next morning. Now I can look at my calendar to see what the day ahead looks like and carve out long time windows where I can spend the time needed on the 2-3 predetermined items.
Yes, I still have the “snack” tasks of daily items I need to do, but this inversion means I’m making progress on the major things that drive results for myself, my team, and/or my company and complementing that with snack tasks vs. the other way around.
The result
These past two weeks, the feeling of “I’m behind” has nearly evaporated. I know I’ve been focusing on the things that matter and making great strides towards them every day.
My to-do list is shorter as I remove the high volume/low impact items from my day that “felt” like progress, but were acting as a hamster wheel in reality. And my sense of accomplishment each day continues to grow, both internally and externally on our business dashboards.
In case you missed these this week
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See you next Saturday,
Sam
This is great advice, Sam! Will start testing this out from this week on.