It’s an anxiety-producer.
Because your time and energy are finite, an ever-growing TODO list means that tasks are piling up faster than you can process, delete, delegate, or complete them.
This leads to the paradox of high-stress, high “business”, but not great “business”, because we’re not working on what really matters, we’re reacting like a goalie.
Everything in every “inbox” is in some sense a task, because even a few seconds of processing requires time and attention. I was thinking about this over the weekend, as I tried to clear out my promotion folder– unsubscribing from a lot of lists, some of which I enjoy, but just don’t have time to read, let alone act on, some of which are probably just spam, etc.
I have to check my promotions folder, because sometimes “real” email gets stuck in there (even when there’s a whole conversation thread), which takes up time I should be using on my main inbox…
All of this low-level work means less time, energy, and focus for what matters. So I’m purging. Trying to prevent things from even coming into my inboxes, if at all possible, and then deleting messages, tasks, etc that I know won’t get done, and moving those “someday” “tasks” to a notes file, where I can reference them without thinking of them as tasks.
This is another area where having a very clear ideal client profile pays huge dividends. You have fewer meetings with patients who belong with a different doctor down the hall. You can make referrals quickly and confidently. Messaging and content creation gets easier.
And if you’re tired of wasting cycles trying to figure out what content to create each week, but hate the idea of just outsourcing your voice to AI, join me tomorrow for a workshop on creating your 2026 content calendar in 5 minutes. Register here.