Workplace Wellbeing: How to take a positive approach to to-do lists

If you’re finding the combination of work pressures, social obligations, and festive planning overwhelming, our experts have a number of strategies to help you cope.

Office workers trying to meet end-of-year deadlines should reach out to colleagues — who are often in the same boat — to bolster motivation. Picture: iStock

WITH just under two weeks left until Christmas, the length of your still-to-do list may be causing you stress. The combination of work pressures, social obligations and the logistics of festive planning can make this time of year a hectic one. Two experts in positive psychology share strategies to help you cope.

“Many of us experience a buildup of stress at work in the pre-Christmas period, says Margaret Forde, a chartered counselling and organisational psychologist (positivepsychology.ie).

“Retail staff have to deal with endless queues of shoppers. Office workers have to meet end-of-year deadlines. It can be overwhelming.”

Rather than succumbing to panic, Forde believes it can help to keep a reverse to-do list, which draws your attention to what you’ve already accomplished.

“It’s based on positive reinforcement, which has been proven to be an effective learning tool and performance encourager,” she says. “It’s why we give kids gold stars at school. Every time you write down a completed task or give yourself a little tick of achievement, a neurotransmitter called dopamine — which plays a role in the brain’s reward system — is released and further bolsters your motivation.”

Christian van Nieuwerburgh says make a to-do list something to enjoy, not dread.

Christian van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of coaching and positive psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology and Health at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, has other tips for managing lists at this and other busy times of year.

“Whether we write them on paper or into task apps on phones or computers, lists give us a sense of control over what we need to do and a feeling of accomplishment about getting things done. But we have to make them work for us. It’s worth taking time to experiment with different types of lists to find the ones that motivate us most.”

Some people like writing tasks on Post-it notes and physically transferring them from the to-do to the completed side of their lists. 

Others like using different stationery and coloured pens. As van Nieuwerburgh says: “It’s all about making our to-do lists something we enjoy rather than something we dread.”

His personal preference whenever he faces a deadline is to keep three daily to-do lists. “One contains the things I really want to get through and can reasonably expect to get done that day,” he says. “It will be short, and I will be happy to get it completed.”

List number two will contain additional tasks he will tackle if he is able. “This list will also be short, and if I get it done, I’ll be even happier,” he says.

His third list will consist of tasks he can defer. “I may have to confer with colleagues to make sure they agree with the items I place on this list,” he says.

“For example, I had a book manuscript due for delivery on December 20 this year. But I knew nobody would read that manuscript over Christmas, and I also knew I would benefit from extra time. So I asked to extend the deadline to January 10, and now it’s deferred until then.”

Van Nieuwerburgh makes his lists more motivating by promising himself a reward, like a 15-minute walk or an espresso with a piece of chocolate, whenever he completes a task.

“I deliver on those promises too,” he says. “It’s self-defeating not to, as the idea of a reward won’t work as a motivator if your brain knows it can’t trust you to deliver.”

Doing tasks one at a time

But what about those moments when list-making simply isn’t enough? When stress levels are so high that the very thought of our to-do list makes us panic?

In those moments, Forde recommends thinking of Lego. “Did you use to feel overwhelmed when faced with a Lego set to make as a child,” she asks. “It’s unlikely you did because you simply set about making it brick by brick. Take that same approach with your work by consciously slowing your mind and focusing on the task at hand. Deal with one task after another without allowing all the other tasks on your to-do list to race through your mind. Do it brick by brick.”

She believes that practices such as guided meditations and mindfulness training help develop our ability to focus by teaching us “how to be in the present moment rather than panicking over an anticipated future”.

Meditation and mindfulness can also make us more aware of how we talk to ourselves. Such self-talk is vital to our wellbeing, according to Forde.

“What happens in our head influences our body,” she says. “We may be only imagining ourselves buckling under our workload or messing up professionally, but our brain interprets such horrors as reality. It then drives us into fight or flight mode, elevating stress and making it more difficult to focus on work.”

To counter this, Forde encourages us to “become aware of the movie we’re showing ourselves in our heads, to decide to switch the channel and then select a more positive movie”.

Van Nieuwerburgh’s top tip for countering stress involves “being kind to ourselves across all time dimensions”. This is simpler than it sounds. In the present, it means taking on a reasonable workload and allowing ourselves adequate breaks.

He adds that this “needs to be balanced with kindness to our future selves. Just as eating too much chocolate cake now will make you feel bad later, you will have to make up for it tomorrow if you go too easy on yourself today.”

Nor should we forget to be kind to our past selves. Instead of berating ourselves for mistakes, van Nieuwerburgh urges us to be compassionate and to try to understand why we made them, so we can avoid them in the future.

He also suggests reaching out to colleagues: “If we’re stressed out about getting everything done, our colleagues are likely to be stressed out too.

“They will appreciate us checking in on them and doing so will remind us that we’re not the only ones feeling the pressure.

“Knowing we’re all in the same boat can reduce feelings of overwhelm and make us feel part of something greater, which in turn can bolster our motivation to keep going.”

Margaret Forde advises tackling tasks one at a time — like building Lego.

Grounding can combat stress

In the 12 days between now and Christmas Day, many of us will feel highly stressed at times. Forde suggests “instant chemistry changers” to bring us out of fight-or-flight mode.

One is grounding. It involves sitting in a chair and planting your feet firmly on the ground before naming five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

There’s scientific proof that this works. A 2014 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US found that mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes in general and ground techniques in particular could ease anxiety symptoms by helping people detach from negative emotions.

Slow breathing is another. “Really focusing on your inhalation and making an elongated sigh as you slowly breathe out for five minutes resets the nervous system,” says Forde.

Five minutes of intense exercise, like jumping jacks, rapid squats, or running up and down the stairs, will have the same effect on your body and mind. So will plunging your hands into ice-cold water, placing frozen peas on your forehead or taking a cold shower. “The cold jolts us out of overwhelmed states,”says Forde.

Her final tip is to “phone a friend”. “Chatting to someone about something unrelated to work, such as a fun evening out you had together, will get you out of that stress loop and allow you to return to work with renewed energy and perspective.”