Why Scheduling a Catch-up Day Once per Month is a Great Idea

This Monday was a public holiday in Canada and many countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. Most people were at home due to the pandemic. In Jamaica, the holiday marks Labour Day, a day on which the entire country focuses on community projects. Not this year. Jamaica was under curfew from 3.00 p.m. Sunday to 5.00 a.m. Tuesday. Everyone stayed home.

I had decided the week before that I would spend the day working, grateful for the absence of calls and emails, so that I could catch up on some long outstanding items on my to-do list. I wrote a slew of emails and scheduled them for delivery on Tuesday morning, not wanting to disturb my clients on their well-deserved day off. How wrong I was.

Early Monday morning, I noticed that I was receiving emails that indicated that people were clearing up THEIR long outstanding items! I even received a response to an email I had sent 6 weeks ago, of which I had long let go of expecting a reply. Those emails just kept coming and coming. Checking in with my clients this week, I discovered that indeed, many of them had spent the day working and were very pleased to have had the time to clear their work backlog.

How did we get to this point where we welcome a public holiday not to relax, but to catch up on our work?

One problem is how we manage our to-do list.

In the quest to keep on top of things, we add items to our list, many with the subconscious title “One day I will get around to this”. We never do, until and unless the item becomes urgent, in which case we magically find the time to get it done. These are the items that make our list longer, no matter how hard we try to whittle it down. They take a mental and emotional toll, reminding us of our lack of productivity, and engendering feelings of frustration and stress. No-one wants this.

One solution is to keep our to-do list to a manageable minimum. Here are 3 things you can do:

1. As you add items to your list, ask yourself if there’s any part of it that you can delegate to someone who can attend to it more speedily. Just because it’s on your list doesn’t mean YOU have to actually do it – you just need to make sure it gets done. Long to-do lists may suggest that you are not delegating enough!
2. Attend to items that take little time right away. My time management coach has trained me to follow the “2-minute rule” – if a task will take 2 minutes or less, do it right away rather than adding it to your list.
3. Schedule regular “clearing out and catching up” time in your calendar. At the least, purge your to-do list once per week. Consider scheduling one day per month where you focus on completing long-overdue items (assuming they are still important). Have fun and declare it a public holiday!

The one thing that every human being has been equally gifted is 24 hours in a day. No-one has more, nor less. Being aware of what you add to your to-do list, and clearing it often, will help you make the most of each day, and give you time to do what public holidays are for – holidaying!