Break free from the tyranny of the to-do list

Ever felt a hostage to your ever-lengthening to- do list? That it never seems to shrink no matter how fast you rush from one item to the next? That you’re suffocated by the weight of it — death by a thousand meetings, errands and chores? Perhaps it even feels like you’ve effectively become your to-do list.

It’s hardly a surprise. We live our lives according to the mantra ‘never a wasted moment’ and compete to prove who’s the busiest and bestorganised. The tyranny of the to-do list is what happens when our homes and children become a series of tasks to be completed. But there is more to life than getting things done.

What’s more, a life without pause is unhealthy, from the cellular level up. It profoundly affects how we feel.

If you don’t stop to think, life will force you to stop and think. At the extreme, the cost is ‘burnout’.

For 15 years, I’ve worked on the Strategic Leadership Programme at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, coaching the next generation of business leaders and leading retreats for top executives.

Along the way I’ve met dozens of brilliantly successful people — yet every one of them has been helped in some way by what I call ‘the power of the pause’. By stopping. By doing less. How? Well, a pause lets you think. It is the antithesis of the to-do list.

In a pause, you can question the direction your life is taking. You can have new ideas or just appreciate the life you are living.

By paying more attention to the space between all those tasks — by lifting our heads from all that suffocating everyday detail — we can spot chances and opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise see.

A pause is not a goal; you can’t tick it off. A pause can last seconds, days, months or years, but always brings a new dimension to your life.

Most self-help guides give you tips to cram more into your life. But my new book, Do Pause, You Are Not A To Do List, will ensure the reverse — that you get more out of your life.

I’m not going to encourage you to take up meditation, yoga, tai chi or mindfulness — all lovely in their own way, but a bit woo-woo. I’m going to give easy, practical ways to introduce pauses into your life.

Not only to stop the suffocating stress of that endless list of jobs, but to rest, regenerate and re-connect with other people, or yourself. Pausing is a subtle but life-giving idea — let’s all stop to consider it.

Don’t try too hard

ALLOW yourself to explore the idea of pausing rather than making it a goal. If it becomes another task on your list, it won’t help. You don’t need to be pausing A startling new book says pressing the pause button on your life is the key to being happier and healthier all the time — if you were, it wouldn’t be a pause. I’d encourage you to aim low and be selfish. Starting small is a good way to build a habit. You could . . .

Pause for breath

WHEN things get difficult or tense, simply ‘take a breath’ before speaking or responding. Shift your attention to your belly, softening it and letting it expand (instead of breathing from the chest), and breathe in gently.

By attending to your body for three or four seconds you can shift your mind and your mood. Taking a breath changes you physically and mentally — it breaks the vicious circle of rush and panic.

Don’t react immediately

CONSIDER that email you reply to straightaway, or the work phone call you leap to take at home. Many of our immediate actions are driven by technology, but do we need to respond like this?

Technology expert and writer, Dr Tom Chatfield, believes we underestimate the value of doing nothing. Just leaving things, he says, is a powerful filter. When you come back to something later, you make a better judgment as to what needs doing, if anything. If in doubt, do nothing. ‘Pause and silence are the friends of better thought,’ he says.

Count to one

IN A Zen monastery, the door to the meditation hall, or ‘zendo’, doesn’t touch the ground. There is a wooden bar across the opening at floor level that you have to step over in order to enter.

This forces you to pause for a moment and notice how you are entering the room — in what frame of mind, with what intention and so on. It acts as a speed bump, obliging you to pause.

An everyday version of this is to count to one before you enter a room. Not ten, or even three, but one. That may seem insignificant, but the important thing is to stop, not how long you stop for.

I rather mischievously suggest this to people who are proud of how busy they are, because even they cannot claim they don’t have time to count to one.

Stop at your front door

ALL too often we get back home from work in a whirlwind, perhaps guilty about being late. In this state, we’re not conscious that we’re about to enter a space where something is already happening.

It leaves no room to notice what mood our partner is in or what other people in the house are doing or feeling. This means we can’t properly connect to loved ones, and that can lead to some misunderstanding or tension.

So take a moment to pause — in the car after you park, or at the door as you find your key — and remember who you’re about to greet and what they mean to you.

Take a think week

FAMOUSLY, Bill Gates takes a ‘think week’ twice a year in a remote spot to disconnect from the everyday, be alone and think about the big issues. Over the course of the week, he’d see patterns, get insights and reach conclusions that wouldn’t occur to him in the office. Think weeks are popular with tech leaders whose world is dominated by the fast and the new. But,whoever you are, taking ‘time out to think’ matters — professionally and personally. The knee-jerk response to a problem is often to work harder at it, but that won’t always help. rather than knuckling down or pushing on, you need to step back. In a pause like a Think Week, you access a different kind of consciousness, which might reveal you are looking at the wrong problem, or looking in the wrong way. The challenge with these longer pauses is how you ensure you don’t skip them. One way to do this is to set aside a ‘time budget’. A week a year? A long weekend a quarter? An afternoon a month? Or how about using your birthday as a trigger to take the day off? Whatever it is, plan it in and commit to spending it.

Get a dog

IF YOU want one single thing to compel you to build a culture of pause into your life — get a dog.

Dogs need to be walked — this will be the highlight of your dog’s day, and for you it will be a pause. As you walk your dog, your dog walks you. And the beauty of this is that it never stops. You can never tick it off your to-do list.

Live by the mantra: busy is the new lazy

WHEN you start to pause, you will have to confront doubts and scepticism — your own, as well as other people’s.

The moral high ground belongs to those who get on with things, not those who ‘delay’. You’ll find many reasons in your mind why ‘now is not the time’ to pause.

expect this and pause anyway. Be willing to act on the basis of feeling, not reasons. Be prepared to pause without being sure what it will bring you.

For me, it helps to think that ‘busy is the new lazy’. Busy keeps things the same — hectic, but unchanging. It is a kind of avoidance, and that’s lazy. By pausing, you reset those stale, exhausting routines, tear up that to- do list (at least temporarily) and revitalise your whole life.

ADAPTED by Alison roberts from do pause, You Are Not A to do List, by robert poynton, published by the do Book Co at £8.99. © robert poynton 2019. to order a copy for £7.19 (offer valid until April 9, 2019), visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. p&p free on orders over £15.