Episode 107 - Let Your To-Do List Do the Heavy Lifting
Welcome to Episode 107 of the Time for Living Podcast!
TRANSCRIPT
show notes
Is there a job on your list that looks tiny and still isn't done three weeks later? "Buy a new fridge" is three words. It's also measuring, checking the stairs, researching, delivery, and finding someone to lift it.
This one is for busy, working moms who blame themselves for an unfinished list. The truth is, you're not slow. Your list makes everything look smaller than it is, and the hidden work eats the time you meant for your dreams.
In this episode, you'll discover:Why so many lines on your to-do list are really projects wearing a task's name
Why hidden steps make your week look emptier than it is
The one-sitting test that tells you instantly which lines are tasks and which are chains
How to keep the line on your list and write the real steps underneath, so your list tells the truth
How to hand the fiddly step-listing to AI in seconds, while you keep the thinking
What a more realistic list gives back: plans that fit your actual week, and room for your dream
Resources:
Ready to take action? Once your steps are honest, the Anchor Map shows you where they could actually fit. It's free at timeforliving.co/anchormap, and it helps you plant one 15-minute anchor for your dream in your real day.
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeforlivingco/
• Email: hello@timeforliving.co
Final Thought:
You don't need a faster version of you. You need a list that tells the truth.
TRANSCRIPT - Let Your To-Do List Do the Heavy Lifting
INTRODUCTION
So, at the end of the last episode, I asked you to make two columns, one for work and one for home, write down what filled your week, and circle the one or two things that actually mattered. And I'd love to know what was on yours. Because I have a feeling that somewhere on there, circled or not, there was a line that's been sitting on your list for a while. A few weeks, maybe. And today is about that line.
If you didn't hear that episode, that's completely fine. All you need for this one is a to-do list, and I'm pretty sure you've got one of those.
So let me ask you something. Is there a job on your list right now that looks really small, and somehow still isn't done?
For a lot of us it's something like "buy a new fridge." You write it down on a Monday. Three words. It looks like a ten-minute job. You might even think, I'll sort that out at lunch. And then it's Thursday, and it's still there. Then it's the following week, and it's still there, and now every time your eye lands on it you feel a little pinch. Why haven't I done that yet? It's three words. How hard can it be?
And slowly, without you ever deciding it, that line stops being a job and starts being a little piece of evidence. Evidence that you're behind, or disorganised, or just not very good at getting things done. I'd love to take that evidence away from you today, because I don't think the problem is you. I think the problem is the line.
Some of the shortest lines on your list are the biggest jobs in your week.
What Building My App Is Teaching Me
Before I get into it, a quick update from the build. If you heard the last episode, you'll know I'm building an app. For me. Because, as I always say, it's not the app, it's the system, and what I really want is an app that works for my system, for the way my brain actually works. Maybe one day it'll be for you too. That would be my dream. But for now, I'm building it for me first.
And this week, the bit I've been working on is splitting tasks up into smaller pieces. Taking one thing on a list and breaking it into the steps that actually sit inside it.
And it's been a bit of a mirror, to be truthful. Because to build that, I've had to look really closely at how I write my own tasks. And I write them exactly the way you probably do. One quick line. As if it's one quick job. Working on something that splits tasks up has made me notice how often my own list makes things look smaller than they really are. Which is exactly what I want to talk about today.
"Buy a New Fridge" Is Never One Task
So here's the myth, and I think most of us believe it without ever saying it out loud. Every line on your to-do list is one task.
It makes sense, doesn't it? One line, one job. Write it down, do it, tick it off.
But let's take "buy a new fridge" and walk through it, out loud, the way it really happens.
First, you need to measure the old fridge. Which means finding the tape measure. Which, if your house is anything like mine, is never where it's supposed to be.
Then you need to check the new one will actually get into the house. Will it fit up the stairs? Through the front door? Round that awkward corner?
Then you need to check which way the door opens, and whether there's room for it to swing open properly where it's going to stand. Because a fridge door that hits the wall halfway open is a very annoying way to find out you skipped a step.
Then there's the research. All the fridges. The sizes, the prices, the reviews, the ones that look basically identical but have different names.
Then you need to check they actually deliver to your area.
Then someone needs to lift the new one in. Who's doing that? Is it included? Do you need to be home?
And then someone needs to take the old one out. Where does it go? Who takes it?
And there are probably a few more steps I haven't even thought of.
That's not a task. That's seven or eight tasks. Some need a tape measure, some need a phone call, some need you at home on a weekday, and some need another person entirely. And all of it is hiding behind three little words on your list.
"Buy a new fridge" isn't a task. It's a project wearing a task's name.
And once you see it, you'll start spotting them everywhere. "Book the dentist." For everyone? That's checking the calendar for each person, finding a slot that isn't in school time, maybe a form to fill in. "Sort out summer camp." That's finding the options, checking the dates against work, checking who's going with which friend, paying, and the packing list. "Renew the passport." The photo, the form, and finding the old passport, which is somehow never in the drawer you were so sure it was in.
Every one of those sits on your list looking like a five-minute job. And every one of them is a little chain.
Why the One-Line List Makes So Much Sense
Now, I want to be fair to the one-line list, because it isn't wrong, and you weren't wrong for writing it.
Writing "buy a new fridge" down was the right first move. It got it out of your head. That matters. A thing that's written down is a thing you're not carrying around at two in the morning. So please don't hear today as "your list is bad." That one line did its job.
And there are good reasons we keep things short. A short list feels clean. It feels manageable. If you sat down and wrote out every step of every job, your list would run to three pages, and that feels like making more work, not less. Most of us have picked up, one way or another, the idea that a good list is a short list. That breaking things down is overthinking. Just get on with it.
And there's one more reason, the sneakiest one. Most of the steps in that chain happen in your head. The measuring, the remembering to check the door, the working out who could help lift it. You do so much of it quietly, while you're doing something else, that it never looks like work. So it never makes it onto the paper.
So if you've been keeping a short list, you haven't been doing it wrong. Nobody ever showed you the second step. Writing the one line was right. It was just never the whole job.
Where the Short List Lets You Down
Here's where it falls apart in real life.
Say you look at your week and think, right, I've got fifteen minutes on Tuesday, I'll do the fridge then. You sit down, ready. And then, step one: the tape measure isn't in the drawer. Or you realise you need to check with someone at home whether they're happy with a bigger one. Or the shop wants a delivery date and you don't know what your week looks like yet. And your fifteen minutes are gone, and the line is still there, unticked.
Nothing was wrong with your fifteen minutes. You just planned a project into a space the size of a task.
And here's the part that's easy to miss. Even when you don't touch it, a hidden chain is still costing you something. Because part of your brain knows it isn't really three words. So it quietly keeps the rest of the chain running in the background. Did I measure? Will it fit? Who's going to lift it? Every half-thought step is one more thing you're holding in your head while you're making dinner, or answering an email, or lying awake. The line looks small on paper, but in your head it's taking up a lot of room. When the steps are written down, the list does the heavy lifting, not your head.
And it doesn't only happen with one line. When your list is full of hidden chains, your whole week looks emptier than it is. You look at ten short lines and think, that's fine, I can get through that by Friday. But it isn't ten jobs. It might be sixty. So you plan too much, the week can't hold it, things slide, and at the end of it you look at what's left over and decide the problem must be you.
Can I be really direct with you for a second? You are not slow. You are not disorganised. You're not lazy, and you're not bad at this. I've watched so many capable women beat themselves up over a list that was never going to get done in the time they gave it, and I've done it to myself more times than I can count. So if you've been looking at an unticked line and feeling that little pinch, I'd love you to put it down. It was never a you problem. The list was making everything look smaller than it is.
And I want to be clear about what "better" means here, because this is where a lot of productivity advice goes wrong. I'm not asking you to be more productive. I'm not asking you to squeeze more in or move faster. I'd just love your list to be more realistic. That's it. A list that tells the truth about how big things are, so you can make honest plans with the time you actually have.
Think about packing for a family holiday. If you wrote "pack" on your list, it would look like a twenty-minute job. But you know it isn't. It's everyone's clothes, the chargers, the little bag of plasters and medicine, the snacks for the car, the soft toy somebody absolutely cannot sleep without, and finding the passports again. Nobody would plan "pack" into the half hour before you leave the house. You'd laugh at yourself. Because you know exactly what's inside that one word. All I'm asking is that your list knows it too.
Keep the Line, Write the Steps Underneath
So here's what works, and it's really simple.
Keep the line. Don't cross it out, don't rename it, don't turn it into something else. "Buy a new fridge" stays right where it is. And underneath it, you write the real steps. Measure the old fridge. Check the stairs and the door. Check which way the door opens. Pick two or three to compare. Check delivery. Ask who's lifting.
That's it. The line stays as the name of the thing. The steps underneath tell the truth about it.
And something lovely happens when you do this. The line stops being a weight and turns into something you can actually move. Because now, on Tuesday, you don't sit down to "buy a fridge." You sit down to "measure the old fridge." Which you can do in five minutes, and then tick off. And that feels completely different from staring at the same three words for the fourth week running.
Now, you don't need to do this for every line on your list. Please don't. That really would be making more work. Here's the quick test I use. Look at the line and ask yourself, could I finish this in one sitting, without needing anything or anyone else? If the answer's yes, it's a task. Leave it alone. If the answer's no, if it needs a measurement, a phone call, another person, or a decision you haven't made yet, then it's a chain. That's the one that gets its steps written underneath.
And if you want a simple place to start, look for the lines that have been on your list for more than a week. Those are almost always chains in disguise.
Let me show you what it looks like with one more. Say the line is "sort out summer camp." Underneath it, you might write: look at the two or three options nearby. Check the dates against work. Message one other parent about which week their child is going. Book and pay. Write the packing list. Five small steps. Suddenly you can see that the first one, looking at the options, is a ten-minute job you could do while the kettle boils. And the message to the other parent can go out tonight. The line hasn't got any smaller. You've just stopped pretending it was one thing.
Now here's the bit I love. Writing out those steps is exactly the kind of fiddly, menial job that AI is really good at. You don't have to sit there working out every single step yourself. You can open any free AI and just say, in plain words, "I need to buy a new fridge. List all the small steps involved." And in a few seconds it'll give you a list. Then you read it, cross off anything that doesn't apply to you, add anything it missed, and keep the rest. You still decide what matters. It just does the fiddly bit quickly.
And that's the same thing that keeps coming up for me while I'm building. The repeated, menial stuff is where so much of the time goes, and it's the stuff that doesn't really need me. So let something else do the listing. You keep the thinking.
A list that tells the truth is a list you can actually finish.
When Your List Tells the Truth
And this is where it all comes back to you, and the life you actually want to live.
When your list is honest, a couple of things change. The fifteen minutes you set aside for your dream stop getting swallowed by surprise chains. The fridge isn't secretly eating three of your evenings anymore. You can see it, so you can give it its own small slots instead of letting it spill into everything else. And you stop spending your best energy blaming yourself for things that were never as small as they looked.
And can I say one more thing? Your dream is probably the biggest one-liner on your list. "Write the book." "Get fit again." "Start the shop." Those are fridge lines too, just much, much bigger. They deserve the same honesty. Not a hack, not a push. Just the truth about what's inside them, written down where you can see it.
So here's the one thing I'd love you to do this week.
Look at your list and find the line that's been sitting there the longest. Leave it exactly where it is. Underneath it, write the real steps, every one you can think of, or ask an AI to list them for you and keep the ones that fit. Then circle the first step. Just the first one.
When you've written the steps and circled the first one, you're done. You don't even have to do that step this week. You've just turned a line that's been weighing on you into something with a way in.
And if you'd like to see where those smaller, honest steps could actually fit in your real day, this is exactly what the Anchor Map walks you through. It's free, you name the dream you want more room for, it shows you where your pockets of time really land, and it has you plant one 15-minute anchor in your actual day. About five minutes, at timeforliving.co/anchormap.
You're not slow. Your list was just making everything look smaller than it is.
And when your list starts telling the truth, the week stops feeling like a quiet judgement on you. Your plans fit the time you've actually got. Things get done when you said they would, and you get to feel that, instead of the pinch. There's more of you left in the evening for the people you love. And your dream stops being one more line you feel like you're failing at, and becomes something with a first step you can actually take.
Next week, once your list is telling the truth, the question is where all those steps actually go. We're talking about time blocking, the kind that survives a real day with kids in it, built around your energy and your season instead of a rigid clock that falls apart by ten in the morning.