Ep #11: The Power of a To-Don't List
episode summary
This week's episode is all about the power of a to-don't list and how it can help you simplify your life.
Join me as we dive into my own to-don't list, from refusing to wear uncomfortable clothes to setting work-life boundaries. I'll share stories about my Grandma Gauthier and her clear refusal to do any yard work or pump her own gas.
I’ll also encourage you to create your own to-don't list, and tell you exactly how. Tune in, and let's take control of our lives together by embracing the power of a to-don't list!
Featured on the Show
Brene Brown's definition of overwhelm from her book Atlas of the Heart.
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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CHAPTERS:
0:04 - The Power of a To-Don't List
6:05 - Creating a To-Don't List
14:30 - Encouraging Reviews for Podcast Growth
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
Hello friends, thank you so much for joining today. I hope everyone's doing well. Today's episode is going to be fun. We're going to talk about having a to-don't list. It's so powerful to have a list of things that you just don't do, and I'm going to share mine with you and encourage you to create your own and share it with me.
I'm recording this in the morning with a cup of coffee, and this is noteworthy because I've had COVID for the past week and I didn't drink any coffee. It didn't even sound good. The only thing I craved was water and green juice and fruit, which is kind of weird, but hopefully that helped me get better. So whatever, but I'm back to coffee. If my voice sounds kind of weird today, that's why I'm on the mend. I feel so much better, but I think I still have a little stuffiness left in my voice. My son got COVID first, and then my daughter so far has escaped it. So we're living in a weird, interesting household right now where the well child is kind of the quarantined one, and I've been wearing a mask at home, which reminds me how grateful I am not to have to wear a mask very much anymore. And in the midst of having a fever and being hot and cold, I was so grateful to have air conditioning when I was so hot and tons of blankets when I was cold. And all in all, my mindset stayed pretty positive, with the exception of one to two"I'm so mad I want this to be over breakdowns, but I felt pretty good, and I think my mindset really helped me just to feel better throughout.
Also, I watched the whole series of Queen Charlotte, which was so good. If you watched Bridgerton and you haven't watched that yet, it's so good. Even if you haven't watched Bridgerton, you could still watch it. It was so complex and there were so many deep issues that they covered in the show, so it really helped busy my mind with thinking about something besides being sick.
All I did was basically watch that and sleep and do zero productive things. I just allowed myself to be sick, which the old Michelle could never have done before. So I'm really proud of myself. Does that sound weird to say I'm proud of myself for just letting myself be sick? I'm almost better.
Okay, I'm going to start off this episode as I have the past couple where I am choosing a review to read. This one is from JD Sosowski. I hope I am pronouncing that even sort of correctly. The review says, "I really enjoy this podcast and all the simple yet effective advice Michelle provides. I have used several of her suggested practices in my life in the past few weeks and I have seen them work. We all need these reminders and I have related to every single episode so far.”
Thank you very much for writing that review and if you are listening and have had a positive impact in your life from this show but haven't done a review yet, I would love for you to share that with me and maybe I will choose yours for next week to read.
Okay, let's dig into today's topic, which is things not to do. First I want to talk a little bit about overwhelm. What exactly is overwhelm? There's lots of different definitions for it, but I especially love this definition from Brene Brown's book Atlas of the Heart. I'll link it in the show notes If you haven't heard of this book. It's really good. It's more like a textbook than it is a self-help book. I refer back to it - it's more highlighted than not highlighted, but she covers every emotion and feeling and what the definition of it is and how you know you're in that feeling and things that you can do to get out of that feeling if it's one that you want to get out of. It's a very interesting, good and in-depth book, but here is what it says. I'm just going to read this whole excerpt from her description of overwhelm. So she says John Kabat-Zinn describes overwhelm as "the all-too-common feeling that our lives are unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche are able to manage.
Well, this really resonates with me. It's all unfolding faster than my nervous system and psyche can manage it. That's the end of the quote there. But I love that concept because that is what overwhelm feels like. There's a certain amount of information that comes in and if we can manage the amount of information that comes in and we can process it, and then we do the thing and it's off our list, and if we have the right amount of input, then we can process it and we don't feel overwhelmed. It's when there is too much and it's unfolding faster than we can process it that we usually get in the feeling of overwhelm.
And when we get there to that feeling of overwhelm, we really don't have the clarity of mind to solve the problems and the issues that are in front of us. So the answer to feeling less overwhelmed is really to simplify your life anywhere and everywhere in your life where you can simplify, do it. By the way, random fun fact about me: in my last corporate job the very last one I had before I became a life coach my title was Simplification Leader. My whole job was to find ways for us to simplify our business by making something, have less steps, or to just stop doing things that we didn't need to be doing, or to make things more efficient. So my brain just works that way and I love efficiency and making things simple. So one way to make things super simple is to make a list of things that you just don't do, and the reason why that makes your life so much more simple is because, once you know, oh, this is a thing that I don't do, you don't have to make the decision every time to decide should I do this or should I not do this? You already know. No, this is something that I just don't do, and I'll give you some examples in just a second here. But it makes it very simple, and then it saves you all the time along the way that you would have spent trying to do whatever it is that you didn't want to do in the first place.
When I started working on creating my own to-don't list, it made me think about my Grandma Gauthier. She was this very elegant lady. She would wear dress, pants and a silk blouse and little kitten heels just to sit around the house for the day, like if we were all gathered together for you know, a weekend or something. That was just her regular old attire for hanging out. She was super smart and took her role as a lady very seriously, and there were just some things that she would not do. For example, she would never, ever go out in the sun or get a tan. She wouldn't be caught dead wearing or even owning sweatpants. She didn't pump her own gas. In fact, when my grandfather died, my dad and his brothers had to teach her how, because my grandfather had done it for her for 60 years. She never did any yard work and told my mom all the time that she was crazy for ever learning how to use the lawnmower. And you can have whatever opinion you want about her list, but I'm just saying she knew exactly what she would and would not do And also, she wouldn't have really cared what you thought about her list anyway. That wouldn't have been on her list of concerns. So, anyway, she was inspiring to me in that way that she was very clear on the things that she did, like she did always look nice and she did not cut the lawn and it was just cut and dry. So between my grandma's inspiration with the things that she just did not do and my love for efficiency generated this idea to have a to don't list. I'm going to give you a couple examples of things that are on my list, and actually I'll read you my whole list eventually, which will hopefully give you some ideas.
One thing that I just do not do is I don't wear anything that is uncomfortable. I love clothes and I love to shop and I love to look nice, but if it's not comfortable, it's just not happening. I don't care if it's the most beautiful, flattering dress in the world. If it's hot or itchy or too tight, there's just no way I'll ever wear it, in which case I might as well just not buy it. Let's say, I see a cute dress at my favorite store. My first move is to feel the fabric. If it doesn't feel good, it just gets no further consideration. Now, this lesson was learned after buying many, many, many, many things that I bought that were uncomfortable and then just didn't wear or regretted that I bought. So if I didn't have this rule, I might buy the dress, kind of know I don't love it, but I just feel like I want to get it anyway because it's cute. So I'm wasting money by spending money on it. I put it in my closet. I'm wasting space in my closet. I consider wearing it, but I never actually put it on. It's also true for clothes that you keep that don't fit you anymore. Every time you look at them and you choose not to wear them, you're just wasting your brain space by considering it. Sometimes I'll even return them, which drives me crazy. That's a complete waste of time when I could have just not purchased it in the first place. Or I'll just give it away with the tags on it and feel annoyed the whole time.
So that's a really simple example and I'm talking about one dress. But if you do that with your whole wardrobe or even half of your wardrobe, you've just created a big waste of time and money.
Another example on my list is that I don't take my laptop outside of my office. I used to drag it everywhere I went. If I was sitting at my daughter's horse lessons, for example, I'd bring it and try to get some work done. Only, I'd never actually get any work done - like any real meaningful work - done And it was more annoying than helpful. It just made me feel like I should be working in every spare minute. I also don't take my computer on vacation. That's something I used to religiously do is take my computer on vacation just in case. I do not need to work on vacation And if someone needs to reach me, they call me or text me.
Now, if you love wearing itchy clothes and bringing your laptop everywhere and it just makes you feel good and you love getting work done at a baseball practice or something, that's totally great. Don't put those things on your to-don't list. Those are just mine. But think about what can go on your list, because every time you don't have to make a decision, you've saved yourself a ton of time and effort. I'm going to read you the rest of my to-don't list just so that you can have ideas for what does or doesn't work for you. I would love to see your list. If you post it, tag me on Instagram @MichelleGauthierCoaching or just send it to me via DM. I would love to see it. I'd love to get some ideas. If I get lots of ideas, maybe I can share them on a future podcast.
Okay, here's the rest of mine. Work-wise, the things that I don't do:
I don't see clients after 4pm. I don't work on weekends. I don't see clients on Tuesday. I keep that day totally clear for marketing and if I need to do like a doctor's appointment or extremely important hair appointment, I always do them on Tuesdays. I don't see my clients for less than six months at a time. That's the rule that I have for a new client. I always see them for six months at least. And the reason why I have all of these rules is because I've tried the opposite of these rules and they didn't work for me. So I just know that they don't work. So now it's on my to-don't list and I have had clients come to me before and say "I would love to work with you, but I can't do a session until, you know, 7pm and I'll say I would love to work with you too, but I don't do that. Let me give you the name of a coach I know who's great who does evening appointments." so it just saves me a lot of decision making, a lot of time, a lot of frustration, because you know and you say yes to something, like if I would have taken on a 7pm client for six months at 7pm, when I had a client to see, I would have been so annoyed with myself because that's my family time and I'm not in the mode of work at that time of the day.
I don't work on weekends because it wears me out. It's funny because now that I like my job, sometimes I'll want to work on weekends. I'll have an idea and there'll be something that I want to do, but I don't let myself do it because I need a real rest and days where I'm not working so that by the time it gets to be Monday, I'm like okay, yay, time to go to work.
A couple other things I don't do. I don't spend time with people who I don't enjoy. I enjoy most people, but this rule is actually one of the reasons why I got a new dentist. I was just like, I do not enjoy spending time with this person and now I have a new dentist and I love her. I don't spend any time worrying about what other people think about me. One time one of my current clients told me that she had referred me to a friend but that the friend said, "I would never work with a life coach who was divorced. Like she had an issue with the fact that I was divorced, and my immediate reaction in my brain was like what, oh my gosh, are other people thinking that? Why wouldn't she work with someone who's divorced? Is there something wrong? Well, Istarted to go down that path and I was like oh yeah, that's right, I don't spend time worrying what other people think about me. I hope she finds a married coach who's perfect for her. It's not me. If that's her rule, it's not me.
Other rules. I don't ever work out on Sundays. I actually don't work out every day, but I choose the days each week, but Sunday is the day that I never work out. I don't cook dinner every night. I usually shoot for making dinner like two or three nights a week, which honestly I've always done, but on the days that I didn't cook I would feel guilty. So now I just know it's a rule, like I don't make dinner every night and this is one of those nights, it's fine. I don't make my kids' lunches. Right now it's summer, so they make their own lunches with whatever they feel like having in the daytime. But even during school, I made their lunches when they were little and they would bring them back and then I would clean them out and throw away half the food that I put in their lunches. They were never happy with what I put in there. They didn't really eat them, and so I just stopped making them so they could either make their own lunch or eat the school lunch. I don't feel bad about that.
I don't walk my dog. My dog hates walking. I know she might be the weirdest dog in the world for that, but I would make her. And then she wasn't happy and I wasn't happy. She does this move where she lays down in the driveway and like puts all four paws out like a 'stop' sign. And we have a fenced-in yard and she likes to run around in the backyard, so I don't walk my dog, so never does that get on my to-do list, because I just don't walk my dog.
There are lots of other things I could have on my to-don't list and lots of things that you can have on yours, so I hope you will share yours with me when you create it.
Thank you so much for listening today, and thanks to all of you who have done reviews. If you haven't done a review, I would love if you could do that. It helps the podcast get shown to other overwhelmed working women, so every review helps us in the right direction. Have a great week and see you next Monday.
Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com. See you next week.
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