I come from a long line of list-makers.

I’m a list-maker, my mother is a list-maker, my grandmother and great-grandmother were list-makers… (we’re also a bunch of do-gooders, get-‘er-done-ers and eyebrow-cocking-know-it-alls, but that’s another post entirely.)

The nice thing about making a list is that I get the to-do chatter out of my head and on to a piece of paper.  But there’s no way to prioritize.  There’s no indication of how important anything is relative to anything else, how much time each task might take, and there’s no good way to determine the order in which I ought to attack the list.

And when one is an artist/entrepreneur like you and me, one usually has a bunch of pretty big projects going on at once, and so looking at that long, undifferentiated list of apparently urgent and/or important actions makes me feel tired.  Also overwhelmed and overworked – even before I’ve actually done anything.

“You Should Just Focus On One Thing” = Hooey

And I know there’s some conventional wisdom out there that says You Should Just Focus On One Thing.  I say: Hooey.  People who like to focus on one thing should focus on one thing, and those of us who like to have lots of things going on should have lots of things going on.  (Although I notice that “lots” like 3-5 projects rather than “lots” like 8-12 projects is often the better part of valor.)

Running Your Career From Your Heart

The ability to correctly prioritize your list can mean the difference between sending out another pointless mass mailing and creating a targeted campaign that yields real results.  It can mean the difference between the frustration of blindly submitting yourself for whatever projects show up on your favorite actor website and cultivating the relationships that can get you offers.  A good to-do list factors in time, budget, potential return on investment and most importantly, the truth about you.  Running your career from your heart is the only way out of the brambles of “should-do” and into the clear sunshine of “love-to-do.”

In short: a good to-do list can mean the difference between life as a frustrated, struggling artist and life as a happy, smiling, thriving artist.

A Freebie For You

Here is the story about a way to make lists that is both practical and heart-centered, and the positive effect this system has had on my life, and subsequently, on the lives of my clients.  (If you’d like the audio version of this story, plus some additional worksheets devised just for creative people like you, please join my mailing list and select the “Best-Life, Highest-Income Producing Decision-Making Audio and Worksheets” as your complimentary bonus gift.)

Vanity And Christmas Cards

One year, just before Christmas, I found myself with an extremely long to-do list (you know how the holidays are) and I was feeling that exhausted-before-I-even-begin feeling.

The number one item on my list was “Make and Send Christmas Cards” which was something I had proudly done for years.  Everybody I knew got a Christmas card with a personal hand-written note – always.  I loved the tradition of it, I loved letting people know that I was thinking of them and I loved the little feeling of superiority that I felt sneak up on me when I thought about how much time and care I always took at this busy time of year.  I’ll note that this superiority-thing is not my favorite thing about myself, but it’s important to realize how big a motivator one’s vanity can be.  And I was quite vain about my Christmas Cards.

Adding to the pressure was this:  that year I had gotten divorced.  So not only had I moved and changed address, but there were a number of people I felt I might “lose” in the divorce if I didn’t reach out to them.  Finally, I felt it was important to reassure people that even though I was no longer married to the man I had been with for nearly 15 years, I was still “me” and I could still be counted on to do all the things I had always done.  Even though I wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

And Christmas Cards were just one of the complicated things on my long, long, loooooong list of things that had to be done before December 25th.  Clearly, I needed to prioritize.

How To Prioritize The List

So I took a sheet of paper and with a big blue marker I made four columns with grid lines going across.  The first column I labeled “ITEM/TASK,” and under that heading I listed all the bits and pieces of things I felt I needed to do.  Every last little one I could think of.  The first one was “Christmas Cards” and the rest of the list filled two pages.

The next column I labeled “TIME,” so next to each item I estimated how much time each task might take.  “Call my sister” was 10 minutes.  “Finish baby gift” was about an hour.  “Pay bills” got 45 minutes.  If I didn’t know how long something might take, I just made a wild guess or I put a “?” next to it and moved on.  After all, this is just a worksheet, not a government form.  Perfection is not necessary here.

“Christmas Cards” got 12.5 hours.  Which seems impossible, I know, but I figured out that if I sent 150 cards and each card took five minutes to write a note, address, stamp and send, then that was 750 minutes, or, 12.5 hours.  And that was assuming that I only sent 150 cards.

The third column I labeled “EXPENSE,” and there I listed how much money, if any, was required to complete the item.  “Call my sister” got zero, since we’re on the same cell phone plan.  “Finish baby gift” was also a zero, because I’d already bought the supplies.  “Pay bills” got $1200, because as far as I could remember, that was about what was due.  “Christmas Cards” got…$130.  That’s 150 stamps at 33 cents each (this was some years ago) equals $49.50 and the cards themselves would probably cost $80 or so.  Most nice boxed holiday cards run about a dollar or so apiece, but I had a great little discount store near my house that sold beautiful cards for roughly half-price.  Now $130 isn’t a fortune, but at the time it represented a significant investment for me.

The final column I labeled “INCLINATION.”  That column wasn’t for facts like time or money: it was for feeling.  On a scale of 1-10, how much did I really feel like doing the project?  It was the gut-check that I often forgot to do.  And when I neglected that gut-check, I ended up with my plate piled high with obligations to other people that left me tired, stressed out and with very little time for the things in my life that were important to me.

So “Call my sister” got a 9 – I love talking to her.  “Finish baby gift” got a 7 – the little sock monkey I was making was really darling and I was excited to finish it.  “Pay bills” got a 10 – I’ve actually never minded paying bills, even when I’ve been broke, and I’d much rather get in there and know that they’re done and taken care of than have them floating around, possibly gathering late fees and causing trouble.  (I told you I was a get-‘er-done-r.)

“Christmas Cards.”  I took a deep breath.  How much did I really want to send cards?  Setting aside my guilt, my fear that I would lose friends, my concern that I would lose my standing as a “good girl,” my sense of tradition, my ever-lovin’ vanity…how much did I want to do it?

Zero.

That’s right – I had absolutely no inclination at all to send even one card.

And then, in what was possibly the single most radical act of my adult life, I crossed “Christmas Cards” off the list.

My little worksheet helped me determine that not only was sending cards time-consuming and pricey, I just plain didn’t want to.  So I crossed it off my list.  I felt strange and liberated and free and a bit like a “bad girl” and it made me laugh.  After all, any friends that I might lose because of a silly Christmas Card probably weren’t friends worth keeping anyway.  I had gotten the mandate from my deep inner self and it said, “NO CARDS, BABY”

But, Wait…

One final word about that Christmas season:  Eventually, I started to feel some twinges about a few of the people that I really did want to send cards to… my favorite aunt, a girlhood friend, an old neighbor of mine.  But I was so enraptured by my “No Christmas Cards” policy that I dared not break it.  See, I know me – I’d go to the store to buy just those few cards and my resolve would crumble and I’d end up doing the whole damn thing after all.  So six weeks later, I handmade some lovely Valentine’s Day cards and sent them off.  Why?  Because it wasn’t expensive, it was only a little time-consuming, and I really, really wanted to do it.

(I tell this story in my Get It Done Workshop, and last year one of my clients, a mid-twenties actress with a staunch spirit, got inspired and sent some heartfelt Valentine’s cards to some of the teachers, casting directors and producers she had come to know.  I believe she got three separate phone calls, thanking her.   Do you think those people will ever forget her now?  Nope.  Now that’s good marketing – straight from the heart.)

Good Prioritization Helps You Be The Person You Hope To Become – And Can Earn You A Thousand Dollars

In time, I added one more column to my list: “ROI” which stands for “Return On Investment.”  That’s a way of determining (and again, I just guess on a scale of 1-10) what, or how much, I might get back from completing that item.

For example, few months ago I had a to-do item that had been hanging around my desk for a few weeks – it was silly, really – I had found a product in a catalogue that I thought a client of mine might like.  I had thought that I would just slip the clipping in an envelope with a quick note, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

When I worked the list, it came up like this:

Wait.

So… this was something I really wanted to do, that I thought would really pay off in the future, that cost almost no time and no money.  Duh.  I did it right that second, got it in the mail that day and she called me three days later to book me for another ten sessions.  That little “to-do” item netted me over a thousand dollars, but more than that, it helped me be the person I want to be – the kind of person who sends thoughtful little notes to clients that I like.

Again – marketing straight from the heart.

This worksheet is not something I use every day, but I do use it when my list feels long, unwieldy and confusing.

Whenever I use it I discover something new, and I find it helps me remember why some things are important and some things, darling, just aren’t.

Samantha Bennett
The Organized Artist Company

THE “FEELING OVERWHELMED” PRIORITIZATION WORKSHEET

First, list everything on your “Could-Do” list under “Items/Tasks.” Any order is fine. Then, next to each item note approximately how much time you estimate the task will take (over-estimate by at least 10%), how much money completing this item will take (if any), your estimated Return On Investment (make a guess about how much you might benefit in the future from completing this task and score it on a scale from 1 -10) and then, finally, do a “gut check” and rank your level of inclination (how much do you really want to do this task right now?)

Use this information to prioritize, eliminate meaningless “shadow goals” and keep yourself on track.