Happiness Project: January – Do It Today

During the weeks before Christmas, I let the list of things that needed to get done weigh me down. In fact, I let these tasks weigh me down so much that I couldn’t do them. Instead of just tackling them, I let them strangle me. And then I found that I wasn’t enjoying the Christmas season as a result.

This past week, I spent a lot of time tackling some of the things that have been hanging out on my to-do list for far too long. Now that I have built a little bit of momentum, I intend to channel this newfound progress into the new year.

I let my Happiness Project slide a bit during our move (which when I think about it was a HUGE part of my Happiness Project), but now with the move and holidays behind us, I am ready to pick it up once again. I find if I concentrate on something, even if I do fall back to old habits a little, I have made enough progress to make the effort worth it.

I keep a running to-do list. On it are things I want to do everyday and one-time things. Unfortunately, the one-time things get pushed to the bottom and never seem to get done, like the videos I took in September and October and FINALLY uploaded. So, I’m going to work on prioritizing my to-do list in order to keep it shorter and easier to manage. At the moment, my “Do It Today” list includes:

• Each day, take care of at least one of the “one-time” (non-recurring) items on my to-do list.
• Arrange my to-do list not by what I want to do, but by what needs to get done.
• Put due dates on long-term items so they don’t drag on.

climbing to the top - 28 dec 2011