George Kao argues the real weight on your to-do list is mental burden from perfectionism, not the work itself. He offers two questions: Is this truly mine to do? And if it is, can I treat it as a spiritual practice instead of chasing perfect outcomes. Repeatedly postponing something might be intuition telling you to drop it.
Do you know what's the heaviest thing on your to do list? I've noticed this in my own life and also in the lives of my clients. The heaviest thing isn't usually a project or some difficult email that they have to write. It's usually the mental burden that we are carrying around about that thing. Yeah, it's the lie of perfectionism. And that weight is almost always heavier than than the actual effort of doing it. You feel the pressure because you have a strong desire to serve and you dream big. But that beautiful dream has been hijacked by a voice that says everything must be done and must be done perfectly. So it creates a shadow of fear that makes even simple tasks sometimes feel monumental. So let me offer you two questions that can help you release this weight. First, for any task that feels like a heavy obligation, I invite you to ask yourself, is this truly mine to do? It often is not, actually. So if the answer is no, or if at least the answer is not a definitely yes, then I want to invite you to renegotiate that responsibility or to decline it altogether if you can. Protect your energy. Protect your energy because without good boundaries you won't have the integrity and the energy to do the real things that you must do to do them well. And on the other hand, if the answer to an obligation of is this truly mine to do? If the answer is a strong yes, well then you have a second path. A path is to reframe that task. Instead of seeing it as a burden, try to see it as a spiritual practice. It's an opportunity, a practice to bring your presence to doing the task, to find joy in that task if possible, and simply to do it lightly without being attached to what the perfect outcome is. And what about those tasks that you keep postponing day after day after day and you're really not sure if it's really yours to do? Well, if you keep postponing it, let me suggest that maybe it's your intuition telling you that it's not yours to do. Maybe it's time to drop the task. I invite you to consider really doing that. Give yourself the gift of spaciousness. Bravely drop one of these self imposed tasks. Today you'll you might just discover that what you thought was a requirement was really just a story and you're the one writing it.
