Inside Scoop: What's Really Hijacking Your To-Do List

Hello, I'm Paula Rizzo. Welcome to my little productivity pop. So good to see all of you. I have a really exciting mini training prepared for you, and then I would love to take any questions that you might have about productivity and specifically I'm talking today about how to clear clutter from your business. And this works for your life too, but I'm not talking about, you know, cleaning up your desk, although that has a lot to do with the kind of focus that you can give your business and all of that. But I am talking about the things that you allow onto your to-do list, those things that hijack your to-do list and the things that you really want to get done in your business and your life and all of that. So I'm going to share some slides with you, a little bit of a training. And then I'll take some questions. So if you have any questions throughout the presentation, feel free to leave them below and I'll get to them at the end. So let me go ahead and share with you some of the stuff that I've got. So here is— actually, I'm gonna do it like this because I think it'll be even nicer to see a bigger, bigger thing for you here. Let me see. All right, that's good. All right, so we're going to be talking about clearing clutter from your business. And just as a reminder for those of you who have not met me before, my name is Paula Rizzo. I'm an Emmy Award-winning television producer and the author of two books about productivity. One is called Listful Thinking and the other one is called Listful Living. And both of them are all like my love letter to list making because I just love lists so much. And it all comes and stems from my work as a television producer, because without lists, I would not have been able to produce live television for as long as I have. I'm also a media consultant, uh, and speaker and contributor. And I also have a course on LinkedIn Learning that is all about how to set up your remote office for maximum productivity. And this is the important part about, you know, how you set up your office, how you set up, you know, how you're going to work, so then you can focus on the things that matter most. So check that out. It was really fun to put together, and I actually I got that myself in my apartment in Manhattan. So that's pretty cool. Now, as I go through the presentation today, uh, I, I want to give you these slides. So if you go to paularizzo.com/list, I'll send you these slides and some other little goodies, uh, on how to up your game with list making and be as productive as possible. And the presentation today is, it's geared towards entrepreneurs because now that I'm an entrepreneur, uh, that's sort of the lens that I'm looking through, but this can be utilized for anybody in any business. Even if you work in corporate America, I've, I've done the same thing, uh, I worked for someone else and now that I work for myself. And this is a really important point that I, I make in a lot of my presentations, is that you become what you believe in. I love Oprah, but this is about mindset, okay? So if you feel that your business is, uh, you know, suffering, or you're having issues with your business and it's just never going to come back around, then that's what's going to happen, right? I'm a very positive person and I believe in the power of of positivity. So I need you to sort of make that shift now and think, you know what? I can have an uncluttered business. I can have a to-do list that only has the things that I have the time and the resources to do on it because I'm going to set it up that way and I will teach you how to do that. Uh, but that is, is a thing we need to think about. How could it be different? How could your life be different? How could your business be different? How could you be different? And a lot of the things that hold us back is ourselves. Guess what? Hate to tell you, but we're the ones that get in the way because a lot of times it's, oh, this has to happen this way, or I have to do this, or I have— do you really? So I'm going to push you a little bit today to question those things that you've been letting into your business and letting onto your to-do list to say, does that really need to be there? Do you need to be the person who does that? Let's think it through a little bit more clearly. Just because it has been the way that you've been doing things doesn't mean that it has to be the way that you do things. Okay? So I'm going to push you a little bit. So first we're going to talk about how to, how to examine where you are right now in this moment. What is not working specifically? Now I know I told you to be positive, but we're going to, we're going to focus a little bit on the stuff that you don't want, right? Because we want to make sure that we don't let that back into your, into your business. I've been talking to a lot of entrepreneurs about some of the pain points that have, have, uh, you know, been vexing you through, through all of this. And someone had told me, I feel like I'm always— like I should always be at my desk. Do any of you feel like that? Just give me a little like or comment in the comments, uh, that you feel like, shouldn't I be doing something? I should be sitting down. I should make sure that I'm, I'm doing something at all times. Maybe you feel like you never have enough time with your family. If this is true for you, write it down. Just take a little note or whatever it is that speaks to you. I can't finish a book. Right? You just don't have enough time to do the things that you really want to do. It's impossible, one woman told me, to take a day off or to take 2 days in a row is nearly impossible because there's just too much to do, too many things get on her to-do list. Is it true for you? And what about email? I know it's a time suck. It's a— we need it. It's an amazing tool, but it really can bog us down. A lot of times I've heard, my day is dictated by emails. If that's you, write that down. So we're examining right now what you're feeling. What is it that's happening that you're not getting out of your, out of your life? Because as an entrepreneur, you have a business, yes, but it's part of your life and it should sort of feed together so that you can live the life that you want to live with your business. And it's really important to zero in on your priorities. And I'm going to teach you a little way to do this that I found very, very helpful. Now, a while ago, right after my first book, List Full Thinking, came out, about a year after that, my appendix burst. And I've told this story many times before, but my appendix burst. And it is a very serious, serious thing. And thankfully, I'm okay. It really set me back. I was in the hospital for 8, 9 days. I was out of work for 6 weeks. It took almost a year plus to recover fully. And after that, everything came off my to-do list. There was nothing that I could do. And I was working full-time as a TV producer. I couldn't do anything. So I had to stop doing the book tour stuff. I had to stop doing the interviews, the podcasts. I had to stop working full-time. My priority in that moment was health. So every decision I made for anything in my life had to go through the lens of, will I— will this— how will this affect my health? Can I physically do this? Can I actually do this? Now, this is a great way for you to, to really hone in on your priority because you can't really do very much else. I don't want anybody's appendix to burst. I don't want that to happen to you, but it's a good lesson on how to be laser-focused because you know immediately, can I do this? Can I not do this? This is a lens through which I look at. So that's what I want you to do today. Zero in on what is your priority. And if you have questions, please put the questions in, in the chat box below, and I'll be sure to get to those after I'm done going through this. But I want to take you to Google. This was a fun little trip. That's my husband and I there, Jay on the left, and we went to visit our friend Gopi at Google, and he was sweet enough to give us a full tour, uh, in San Francisco and Mountain View, so outside San Francisco, of the Google campus. This was a few years ago, and it was such a fun place. Now, Gopi is, is super smart, and he wrote a book that is called The Internet to the InnerNet. Get it? The internet to the internet. It's all about how to live a conscious life even, even with, you know, having, um, having technology. So he says in the book, if you had only 1 hour, what would be the next one thing you would do that would maximize the quality of joy, presence, and life? If you only had 1 hour. Now, for me at the time when I was healing from, from that, you know, appendix burst, that 1 hour would probably be spent sleeping. I probably wanted a nap, honestly. If there was the difference between, "Should I do this one thing on my to-do list or should I nap?" Napping was getting precedent. What I want you to do is to make a list of all your priorities right now. Just write them down off the top of your head. What are the big priorities in your life? This can be a lot of different things. It could be sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, love, finding a new job. Uh, you know, any kind of stuff that's going on. Maybe there's a specific work project. And for entrepreneurs, it's important because we do so many different things and everything feels like a priority, right? But it's not. So what is the one big priority? What are the passions? What are the things that you, uh, you know, maybe it's networking. Maybe you can make a list. There can be more than one priority on this list. Okay. So I just want it to be a brain dump exercise where you just put everything down, get it down on paper. But now we're going to focus you. OK, you can only pick one. That's it. It has to be this way because there can't be all these different priorities. And I realize sometimes there's different priorities for your work life and your home life or whatever it is. But when you set the intention and you write it down and you say, OK, my intention, my priority right now is this one project, getting this one client, doing this, whatever it is. Focus that and write it down, put it on a sticky note, stick it next to your computer so that you can have that as a reference point and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm getting hijacked. I'm getting pulled away. There's so much other stuff and other clutter. I really shouldn't be focusing on that. I need to clear the clutter using the priority. Do you see how that works? So you really need to have that priority clear in your mind so that you can easily make decisions and you can easily say, hey, you know what? I would love to do that podcast with you. I'd love to be on it. But right now I'm focusing on than, you know, doing this, this training every, every week. And so I need to make sure that my time and energy and effort is focused on that, but I can do it at a different time. So you need to be able to really, really see it and use it. So it's creating that list of all the priorities, picking one, and now using it. So here's a couple ways to use, to use it. So once we have that priority, let's say the priority is sleep. Let's say you have not been getting a lot of sleep lately. And so that way, anything that's going to interfere with your sleep schedule is not going to be a yes. It's going to be a no or not right now. Right. So you have to first pause. And this is the same thing with your to-do list and your email. When you see things start to come in, it's our tendency to say, oh, let me just answer that real quick. Let me just get on that. Let me just say, you know, and then you start doing it and you're down the rabbit hole and you're doing things that other people want you to do and not necessarily the things that you intended to do. Right. Instead, take a page from a meditation book. I mean, don't roll your eyes or anything. I'm really into meditation now. I wasn't always, so I understand those of you rolling your eyes. The idea is to pause before you jump in, not just take action and do. Pause. Stop yourself before you start doing something else on your to-do list or you do something someone else asked you to do. Pause, check in with that priority that we set and say, is this task, is this aligned with my priority? And if it's not, it has to be a no or it has to be a not right now. And the way that you do this is to have rules. Pre-thinking is a really, really important tool. Being able to prepare for how you will answer questions. I mean, as a media trainer, that's what I do all day, every day is just throw questions at people and say, how would you answer this question so that when the question comes to them, they know how they're going to answer it. It's the same thing here. We know what our priorities are in our business. And so when there are other things that come our way, we know immediately how we're going to protect our time and how we're going to set those boundaries and clear that clutter away. Because it might be exciting. It might be a fun opportunity for you to do at a different time. Right now it's just clutter. So having rules. There's, there's two ways that I like to look at this. If you're a Tim Ferriss fan, you may have heard this quote from him before, but when he makes decisions, he says, if it's not a hell yeah, It's a no. I have a love-hate relationship with Tim Ferriss, so this sometimes resonates with me and I realize that sometimes not everyone can just use this as an end-all be-all. So I like to look at the Marie Kondo version of this. And there I am with Marie Kondo in New York City. We were at the 92nd Street Y. I was so thrilled to meet her. She didn't speak any English, but she was adorable and I loved her presentation through a translator. So she was signing my book there. And, but her thing is about sparking joy, right? So when you do get a request or something comes onto your to-do list, of course there are things that you have to do, I understand. But there are other things that you say, you know, does this spark joy? Is this something that even though it's not one of my priorities, let's just say, that I'm so pumped, I'm so excited about, I so want to do, then it's a yes. But you have to take that gut hit. You have to really feel it. And that's what Marie says with, with your objects and with your things. You touch it. Hold it and you see, how do I feel? Did I get really excited about it, or could I care less about it? So maybe I'm just gonna get rid of that, that sock, right? Uh, so that is how I want you to be thinking about the things that are hijacking your to-do list, to be able to look tomorrow as things start coming into your inbox. But you first have to have the priority set, okay? So that is the big homework assignment for you, is to pick your number one priority. So do the dump of all of the priorities and all the things in your life. You know, maybe you want to learn a Maybe you wanna, I don't know, whatever it is, write that all down. But then we need to zero in. What is the actual number one priority? Because that is the lens through which you're going to look. Tell me what it is in the comments. I would love to hear it. And again, if you go to paularizzo.com/list, you will get the slides here and you'll also get, um, you know, some little, some little things about list making that will be able to up your game. I have a list making starter kit that I think will be really helpful. Garrett, how sweet. She says, "You're amazing," with lots of Ms. That's like a lot. That's a lot of Ms there. I love that. Well, thank you, Garrett. I appreciate it. I love spending time with you here. If you have any questions, comments, put them in the comments below. Even after this is not live anymore, during the replay, I will go through and answer as many of those as possible. Thank you for spending a little time with me. This little exercise will help you. And I know that it will because it's helped me so much to be able to stop myself and say, OK, what is a priority? Is this task aligned with that? And if not, all right, well, we're going to have to push it to another day or we'll have to push it to another, another thing. And I have lots of tips and strategies on how to actually do that. But this is the most important part. Get the priority down and then we can look through that lens. So leave me some comments, some questions. And Paul, thank you so much. He says, I must get your book. Thank you. I appreciate that, Paul. I hope you enjoy it. I have, I have two, Listful Thinking and Listful Living. And Listful Living is a journal, so it's meant to be written in. And so it does take you sort of on a journey through your lists. Okay. So someone has a question here about, Diane is asking, do you stay with one priority until it's complete or do you suggest tieboxing one priority and then moving on to the next priority? Well, priorities change over time. So this is a good instinct to say, what do we do? We do this until completion. They change, right? So sleep was my priority for a while until it wasn't, until I got a new priority. So, but in that timeframe, I do think that it is a good check-in to check in maybe at the beginning of every month and be able to say, okay, what is the priority for, um, this week? Where's the priority for this month that I'm going to be looking through this lens? It's just to kind of pull yourself out of the doing mode because you get sucked in, you start doing other things, and then off you go. But this is really like a grounding exercise so that you know, okay, this is actually the priority for me. And it changes. It does change. It changes monthly, changes weekly sometimes. But you have to remember that you should check in with yourself. OK, so she means time, time boxing. I understand. Got it. OK. Someone else is asking from LinkedIn. It feels great to have a productivity expert give us permission to prioritize, prioritize and say pause or hold on to or other things instead of continuing to practice the nonproductive default method of spending the day putting out fires. Yes. And that's the thing. It's not productive to continue to do things the way that you've been doing them. We have to pivot, especially entrepreneurs. We know how to do this. We do it all the time in our business. But you have to be able to align with your priorities and make sure that it feels good, because you don't want to be like, "Ugh, I'm doing this thing again and I really don't want to," and all of that. Now, Garrett has a question about how to politely set boundaries with people who are endlessly emailing you. Well-intended hijack asks. Very good. I like that, the hijack ask. Well, you have to have your priority set. Is this something— am I able to take on this task at this time? And sometimes if it's not part of your priority, but you're excited about the person or you really like them, it's going to be a yes. You'll say yes, you'll figure it out, right? However, if this continues to happen, you do have to have some sort of boundaries. So I would say, uh, like even with your schedule, I block out my schedule in a certain way so that I have, you know, client meetings at specific times or networking sessions at specific times. And if those times are booked, it's an automatic no, I can't do it this week. And I'm not going to fit it in because I know that if I fit it in, I'm going to be cranky and I won't be able to eat lunch. And you know, then my productivity goes down. So it's very much about protecting what works for you and creating that boundary around it. So to be able to politely say, that, you know, a lot of times you can just be plain. You don't have to give a reason. You really don't. I'm so sorry, I'm not able to do this. Period. The end. That's all. And then just move on. And I know it feels a little unnatural at times to do that, but it takes practice. And when you start doing it and you start to see, oh, okay, when I do say no to these things that I actually don't want to do and don't serve my priority, I get a lot more done and I'm able to really, you know, not only boost my own productivity, but I feel better. I feel like I'm doing something of value versus, you know, just doing what other people want me to do. So once you start to do it, you will find that it's much, much easier to be able to, to say no in a good way, you know, in an okay way where you feel good about it. Because, you know, if I say no to this, I'm saying yes to something else that, that does align with me and does align with my priority. Well, these are great questions. Thank you so much for, for showing up. And, uh, I, I, if you have other questions— thank you, what you're, what you're saying makes sense. Thank you, great, wonderful. I'm so happy to hear it. If you have other questions, things pop up, or, or you want to tell me what your priority is, I would love to hear it in any of the comments below because when you write something down, you're 33% more likely to do it. So if you go ahead and exclaim that this is your priority and you say, "Hey, this is what it is," you're holding yourself accountable and you're also really cementing it in your mind to say, "This is it." So that's why I think if you pick the one priority, tell me in the comments and also put on a sticky note and stick it next to your desk. Stick it right next to your computer so you can look at it and remind yourself, oh yeah, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, not what everybody else wants me to do. All right. Well, it's been a blast. I hope to continue to talk to you in the comments below and happy productivity to you. Bye-bye.