Don't 'To Do'... try 'Ta Da!'

I’ve spent my entire adult life List making. In fact – I’m certain it probably started in my youth.

Everything goes on a list – I am the ultimate consumer in pads of paper, stationary and sticky notes. They are categorized by color, by order of importance, alphabetical order, who in the family needs to do it… you name it – I have a list for it. 

Over the years I have become the Organizer extraordinaire… my walls are filled with calendars, organizing systems and magnetic cork memo boards. The trouble is – I don’t have time to update the calendars and more often than not, I get where I am going and have forgotten The List. There’s rarely chalk for the Chalk Board of Needed Items and the cork board has no tacks left.

I reprimand myself daily – I converse with and compare myself to other more ‘capable’ mothers who seem to manage it all successfully - only to walk away feeling more defeated. I preach success and completion and putting ‘no less than one hundred percent into everything’ to my children – yet I can’t remember what we need from the grocery store.

So – at my wits end - I decided one morning, instead of starting my day writing the dreadful list of To Do items that I’d never get through – I’d toss it. That evening – I wrote my first ‘Ta Da’ list – of the things I’d actually accomplished that day. The change in my attitude and sense of ability was drastic – after all – look at all that I HAD completed! I went to bed that night with a sense of accomplishment that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

I haven’t written a To Do list since and my Ta Da list gets longer at the end of every day. So, I suggest to you reader – that you realize you simply can’t get it all done – and it’s OK. Life is short – and at the end of it all – your To Do list won’t matter. What you actually “Ta Da” will.  

 Try It.