The To-Do List Is Stressing You Out and What To Do About It

If you have more to-do lists than you can count — and you still can't find the thing you wrote down — this episode is for you.

SuperKate breaks down why high-achieving women resist systems, what your nervous system is actually doing with all those unfinished lists, and a simple weekly practice that helps your brain stop trying to hold everything at once.

Not a productivity hack. A nervous system reset.

In this episode: Why writing things down in ten different places is making things worse. A simple four-question framework: keep it, do it, schedule it, or delete it. How to find the three locations that cover the geography of your life. Why knowing you have a system calms your nervous system — even before you use it.

This week's practice: Gather every note, list, and reminder you have. One place. Thirty minutes. See what shifts.

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00:00 To-Do List Stress

01:18 You Are Not Broken

02:32 Why Systems Feel Hard

04:24 Collect Every Note

04:51 Sort and Simplify

05:45 Two-Minute Rule

06:04 Time Block and Delegate

07:15 Choose Your Tools

08:46 Weekly Review Ritual

09:54 Nervous System Relief

10:32 Put It Down

11:38 Newsletter and Goodbye

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Connecting with Superkate. The post-it note on your desk, the text you sent yourself at 11 p.m., the email sitting in your drafts folder that you were going to send yourself, but you got interrupted, or perhaps the note in your planner from three weeks ago that you keep seeing but you haven't dealt with yet. You wrote it all down so you'd remember, but now you can't remember where you wrote it down or if you wrote it down, so you write it down again somewhere else and somewhere in your body, in those tight shoulders, that that low level of anxiety that's constantly been with you. Your nervous system is keeping score of every single thing you haven't checked off yet. I'm Superkate, your somatic life coach. And today we are talking about the to-do list. But we're not going to talk about it in a productivity hack kind of way. We're talking about from the point of view of your nervous system because it's exhausted from trying to hold all of this. And there's a better way. And here's what I want to say first before we get into anything practical. You're not bad at remembering things. You're not disorganized. You're not falling behind because something is wrong with you. You are a high-achieving person whose nervous system has been running on high alert for so long, your brain is genuinely working harder than it ever has or wants to. Layer on top of that, the hormonal changes many of us hit at a certain point in life, the chronic stress from all of those years of nervous system dysregulation and the relentless demands that are coming at us from every direction. And it seems to only be getting more and more as the years go on. And of course, you're not going to be able to hold it all. You can't hold it all. You can't. The problem is you've been asking your nervous system to be a supercomputer when it actually needs a system. I know what just happened when I said that because I felt it too. A system? I don't need a system. I'm handling it. I've been handling it. I'm fine. I'll be fine. Sound familiar? Here's the thing about high achievers, and I say this with so much love because I am one. We resist systems because somewhere underneath it all, we believe that needing a system means we've failed. Because we've built a lot of our beliefs in operating patterns around being independent, not needing anyone. So we never ask for help. So if someone, because if someone finds out we have to write things down to remember them, maybe they'll think less of us. I promise you they won't. And if they do, you shouldn't even be caring about their opinion anyway, honestly. And I know this because I've been on calls with people and I brought up something that they've mentioned months earlier, something small, something personal. And the only reason I remembered was because I wrote it down. And every single time, the response was not, oh, how sad that she had to write it down. It's, I can't believe you remembered that. They're impressed. They want to know how I do it. And when I say I wrote it down, they're still touched because I knew it was important enough to write down. A system isn't a weakness. It's how you give your nervous system permission to finally exhale. You know that feeling. So here's what I want you to try. This week, set aside time in your calendar, about 30 minutes, and I want you to gather all of those notes. Every post-it, every text you've sent yourself, every note in your planner, in your notes app, in your email drafts, everything. Bring it all to one place, to your desk, to your table, wherever you're gonna, this is your time. And I know that sounds like a lot. Now, once you've got everything in front of you, here's how to go through it. I want you to notice how simple this actually is because we tend to make it more complicated than it needs to be. First, ask, is this still relevant? Because sometimes we write things down in a moment of inspiration or urgency, and by the time we get back to it, it doesn't matter anymore. The other day I found a note I'd written to myself that just said LinkedIn. That's it, LinkedIn. I have no idea what that meant. Post on LinkedIn, respond to someone, start a campaign. I have no idea. So I threw that note away, gone. And you know what happened? Nothing bad. Nothing bad happened. Actually, I felt better because all of a sudden there's one less note I have to worry about. If the note is still relevant, the next question: can this be done in two minutes or less? If yes, do it right now. If it is, remember to add such and such meeting into my calendar, that's gonna take less than two minutes, do it right now. Don't just put it back on the list. Just do it. If it needs more time than that, time block it. I found a specific moment in my week and I put it there. Not, I'll get to it eventually, a specific day, a specific time. For example, a lot of us entrepreneurs, we have notes about content that we want to make. So I'll make a small pile of all the content I want to make and then time block for that content. Now, if it's something that doesn't have to be done by me, I delegate it. And yes, delegating to your future self counts. Putting something on next Thursday's list is still delegating. You're telling yourself, not now, but then. And that is a gift to your nervous system right now. Because not only have you somehow, like not somehow, but you've kind of checked that off the list. You have assigned it a time in your calendar. And now your nervous system doesn't have to think about, I have to remember it. I have to, it is in the calendar. Now, I personally write things down in three places: post-it notes for the thoughts that come at night when I don't want to look at my screen, uh, my planner for anything scheduled, and I use an app called Todoist for everything else. I have these three places, and that's it. Could I use fewer? Maybe, but those three cover sort of the geography of my life, the late nights, the scheduled commitments, and the running tasks. And every week I go through all three. I collect everything, I go through the questions, and I consolidate. Now, what are your places? Do you have two, three, five, ten? There's no judgment. I've been in that 10 places era because I discovered two tasks, two task list apps that I wanted to try. Oh, and there's a new journal that I saw at the office supply store, and there's the planner that I haven't sort of closed out yet. And I've been there with all of the places. But I want you to think about which locations actually cover your life and whether you can get that number down. Even going from 10 to 5 makes a huge difference. Going from five to three, that's also a huge difference. Once we've done all that, the most important part, pick a time each week when you're going to come back to gathering all your notes together in your calendar. Put it in your calendar. That that, you know, maybe it's a Wednesday morning, maybe it's a Friday afternoon where you collect all of those notes again because they're gonna, they're gonna accumulate, they always do. They're gonna accumulate, and you're gonna you're gonna have that time in your calendar to go back through those. And you protect that time. When your brain knows that once a week everything is gonna be accounted for, it stops trying to hold it all of the time. Because this isn't just a productivity exercise. It's just this is you telling your nervous system, I've got you, I'm on your team. You don't have to hold it anymore. I'm gonna take care of it. And what I noticed when I started doing this consistently, I got more focused, I got more creative, I started enjoying things more, and not because there was less to do, but because my nervous system wasn't white-knuckling every single thing I hadn't done yet. I could put things down, I could be present and I could like laugh at dinner without that incessant, like write down, like, I've got to do this and I've got to do this, and trying to remember all of the things. Trying to remember if I wrote it down, wouldn't that be nice to be able to be present, whether it is with your family or your friends, or maybe just your your pets, just being in the moment without that nagging voice saying, hey, don't forget, don't forget. And this is one way of putting some of it down. Not all of it, and it's it's not gonna happen overnight, but some of it. And some of it can happen this week. Figuring out how many places you're writing things down and then picking a time to collect it all and consolidate, that lets your nervous system breathe for a minute. Remember that big inhale and exhale. You've been carrying it all for a long time. And it's okay to put some of it down now. If you are interested in more tools and connections, sign up for my newsletter. The link is in the show notes. And as always, it is an honor and a privilege to connect with you.