3 Reasons Why To Do Lists Are Killing You

Have you seen people making daily to do lists? I’m sure you have. I know people that literally run their lives by these things.

It’s kind of scary on a lot of levels.

On a recent show I talked about to-do lists and why they’re so damaging to our health.

If you’d like you can listen to what I had to say here.

It’s my contention that to do lists are toxic for 3 reasons which I’ll explain below. But before I explain why I think they’re less than excellent for your health I want to let you know a good idea for how to create healthier to-do lists.

I’ll explain more about that at the end of this article.

For those of you who cannot live without your daily to-do lists I offer some ways for you to alter your lists in order to create some calmness to your crazy days that are revolving around these lists you create.

Here are three reasons why I think to-do lists are harmful.

To Do Lists Cause Unneeded Stress In Our Lives

I believe they’re toxic for a few reasons and not the least of which is that it adds stress to our already stressed out lives. We already have enough things going on in our lives the last thing we need is to have a list that we know we have to “complete”.

Think about all the stress and worry that you create when you know that you have to rush around when doing your errands because you have to get a certain amount of things checked off your list.

Stress weakens the body to an unbelievable degree and having a list that we have to get done, hanging over our heads is very very unhealthy and I believe toxic to the human body.

We already have enough stress in our lives don’t sabotage yourself by adding insult to injury.

To Do Lists Subconsciously Place Value On Achievement

How many times have you had somebody ask you at the end of the day, “So what did you DO today?” Our culture places a high degree of value and importance on the idea of doing, achieving, goal setting and accomplishing things in our lives.

On one side of the coin I completely understand that we don’t want to be lazy but we’ve swung so far the other direction in our culture to a significant degree.

I read stories of kids who have mental breakdowns or commit suicide if they get poor grades. They believe the lie that there’s some kind of permanent record and if they don’t get good enough grades they won’t get into a particular college and their entire life will go down the drain because they were late turning a paper in or got a B+ on an exam.

It’s very sad.

What do you talk about at high school reunions? All people seem to do is to compare how successful they are to one another. Women comparing themselves to other women in their class over who they married, what jobs they have and how many children they have.

It’s very sad.

Rarely do we sit with each other and talk about ideas rather than accomplishments or goals.

Having to do lists subconsciously reinforces an inward thought pattern that values doing rather than being.

Where does disease come from?

In my opinion it’s not poor diet, toxins or anything else (and that’s coming from a person who’s radically devoted to being healthy using cleansing, detoxification and dietary protocols), it’s stress.

Stress prevents the body from being able to deal with any toxins that might contribute to a disease process in the body.

To Do Lists Reinforce Negative Thinking & Take Away Power

When we start each day with a list of things we must do in order to feel validated (to ourselves or others) we subconsciously give ourselves a reason to either complain or feel like we don’t have any control over our lives.

Let me explain…

Let’s say you have 10 things on your to-do list on a Saturday and only 8 of them get done. Perhaps halfway through the day we saw an old friend who took up an hour of the day talking.

During the time talking with this old friend you could tell him or her that you can’t talk any longer and you’ll call them later. But in order to be polite you purposely decide to NOT say this.

Now on one level you feel like this is the one thing that ruined your ability to complete your list today. So you decide to complain to yourself mentally about how if that friend hadn’t seen you than you could have completed everything on your list.

But you also remember it was a choice and you COULD have told your friend you had to go.

Knowing it was a choice, you beat yourself up and tell yourself (all mentally of course) you should have said something to get out of there.

Now you have this mental battle going on in your mind (more stress) and now you complain about it as if you had no choice which makes you feel better because deep down your self worth is wrapped up without knowing it, in how much you accomplish rather than what kind of person you are.

You feel powerless because you know it was your choice.

Do you see how much stress, anxiety, worry, fear and blame are going on internally that is revolving around your desire to complete your to-do list?

It’s crazy isn’t it?

Now I suggest placing more value in your life on what kind of person you are and how much you can impact others. If that means you only get 3 things done on your list but you were able to impact another human being in a positive way, then so be it.

I like to think of it as “being vs doing”. We’re human “beings” first, not “human doers”.

We’re not robots that simply work in the factory of our lives accomplishing task after task.

We have the unique ability to have profound impacts on people with every word we say.

A Simple And Unique To-Do List Hack

For those of you that simply cannot give up your to-do lists and want to make me pry it out of your cold dead hands, I’ve got something for you that you might enjoy.

I cannot take credit for this as it was sent in to us by a listener and I thought it was genius.

Add these types of items to the next to-do list you create.

• Take 5 deep breaths. Remember to breathe
• Say a prayer of thanksgiving
• Meditate
• Have a relaxing bath
• Call my best friend

These things will make you happy and you can cross them off your “list”.

I would add these things in and use them as a transitional tool with the goal of eventually weening you off the list altogether.

When next Saturday comes around do you think you’re going to be able to not create a to-do list?