All of us walk around with a to-do list in our head – take out the garbage, make lunch, go to our Prostate Exam, etc.
Underneath all of these superficial day-to-day tasks lays a more menacing, less acknowledged list.
A hard conversation, some mundane work, or making a tough decision all make their way onto this list.
I call this my “Shit List.”
There’s Power in Our Shit List
Imagine that someone made the decision to eat McDonalds everyday for twenty years.
McMuffins for breakfast, BigMacs for lunch, McChickens for dinner… And milkshakes for special occasions.
Until one day they roll into the doctor’s office (literally) and the doctor tells them that they need heart surgery.
Like most people, our gluttonous friend throws heart surgery on his shit list and decides to put it off. The problem is, each day that he puts it off, the worse his condition gets. And eventually, if he puts it off long enough, his heart will fail, and McDonalds will have killed him.
Heart Surgery & The Shit List
Whether we know it or not, most of us have a bad habit of avoiding the things that go on our shit list despite the fact that they are critically important to moving our life forward.
And just like the person that puts off heart surgery, we suffer because of it.
Every day that we don’t fire the bad employee, our bottom line suffers.
The longer we put off the decision to change jobs, the more unhappy we become.
Each day that we skip the gym, we reduce our chances of being found attractive by a girl.
The longer we wait, the chance of us doing the thing that we’re avoiding decreases. Day by day our odds lower until they dwindle down to zero. Which means that the thing that was most important to our betterment never happens at all.
Here’s How to Fix This
I’m just as guilty of avoiding the tasks on my shit list as the next guy. Thankfully, I’ve been able to recognize this in myself and put some systems in place that help me knock out these tasks as soon as they come up.
Step number one is ripping off the band-aid.
In other words, the second that one of these tasks comes up, I immediately schedule time to take care of it.
Let’s say that one of my contractors wasn’t doing his job. For my business to work, we’d have to go our separate ways, so I’d set up a call for the very next day to break the news to them. In perfect world, it would be the first thing on my schedule so that I can’t come up with any excuses to avoid it.
Step number two is incentivizing yourself to do the task.
Maybe I have to do something really mundane… like accounting. Knowing that I can easily put it off, I try to make it a more enjoyable task by buying myself a $6 coffee and throwing on some music. This incentivizes me to do the task, while also making it less horrible.
Step number three is nutting up.
Sometimes in life we have to do things that we don’t want to do. In fact, most of the time, these are things that no one wants to do. But if we ever expect to get anywhere in life, these tasks simply have to be done and there’s no way around it.
Recognize this. Embrace it. And push through.
Everything We Want in Life Is on The Other Side of Our Shit List
If you’re not where you want to be, look for the tasks that you’re avoiding and attack them until they disappear.
Because knocking out the tasks that end up on our shit list is the only thing that separates the person that we are from the person that we want to become.
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