Overcoming The Must-Do Mindset -- It's Your Choice

Overcoming The Must-Do Mindset -- It's Your Choice

“To budget is to choose” – Trevor Manuel, Budget Speech, 2006.

When our finance minister made this assertion, I got thinking about how easily we can get stuck in a rut, scurrying about our hasty lives, so busy doing all the things we feel we have to do.

I’m referring to important things like having a job for income, getting to work on time so we keep our job so we hopefully have a continued income, submitting our tax returns on time, even everyday housekeeping, grocery shopping and garden maintenance.

To add to the stress of juggling our time constraints, many of our must-do tasks are routine and, whether boring repetition or just plain unpleasant from the outset, we can easily develop resentment, anger and loathing toward these must-do tasks.

Base-level motivators – the drive for survival

So how do we usually cope with these activities? Typically, we will switch on auto-pilot and disengage our minds. When we do this enough we become numb to the purpose and significance of what we’re doing and our activities become robotic. As we separate what we do from the original meaning of it, our motivators lower on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the physiological and security levels.

When the bulk of our activities are around survival, it’s hard to avoid feeling like everything we do is a schlep or at best, superficially fulfilling. This is where motivation is dominated by fear and it’s easy to start feeling like every task is a must-do.

So how do we deal with must-do tasks? In truth, there are several ways. However, to keep this article brief and practical, I won’t discuss having a sense of life purpose, having a personal vision, goal-setting, prioritisation of work and a myriad other (for now) distracting answers.

In dealing more effectively with must-do tasks, the method I’ll discuss here involves changing our attitude. Easier said than done? Of course! So here’s how we can look at must-do activities from a new, empowering angle.

All our time is free time

What if I said the phrase “There’s no certainty in life other than death, taxes and change,” is only 33% true? Specifically, the only must-do is death.

Yes, I am saying we don’t have to spend time paying taxes and we are not obliged to change for anything! More specifically, I am saying that how we spend our time is entirely our choice.

It is our choice to work or not. We have a choice to take the kids to school on time or not. We don’t have to put out the bin on garbage day. Those TV ads are right, we don’t have to do banking or laundry, ever! No matter how important or trivial, there is no must-do task in life.

Of course, there will be consequences to our choices. Even if some-one is holding a gun to our head, we still have the choice to disobey the demands. The “or else” may be patent, but it is still our choice to do or not do.

With a must-do task, it is usually obvious what our choice should be. Yet, regardless of the certainty of the consequence, the root of everything we do is our own choice. At the simplest level of binary options, we consider the result of doing and the result of not doing, then we make a choice.

As results materialise, we continue making choices and our results accumulate to shape our reality. Your reality at this very moment, as you are reading this text, is the accumulation of the results of every choice you have ever made in your entire life.

Choices give us power

The more choices we give ourselves, the more power we have available to us. SARS said we must submit our income tax returns by 14 July. It didn’t seem like there was any choice in this, right? But think about it. What about the choice to submit late? Or the choice to not submit at all? Sure, there are consequences, but it’s still a choice and the options are easier to see when we separate choices from consequences.

The more choices we have, the more power we have. Next year, if you choose to submit your tax return on time, you might act with power, purpose and conviction, knowing that you chose to do that. It’s exactly the same with our daily must-do tasks, like getting to work on time. What ever we do, it can flow with much more motivation and power when we choose to do it, not because we have to.

Personal Power and Empowering Self-talk

Let’s put this into practice with two techniques to kick start new habits and ways of thinking. Try out these techniques and see what works for you:

1) Practice personal power: when you notice a feeling of must-do, stop for a moment and consciously think of other options you have. The most obvious is the opposite: to not do. What might result from this alternative choice? Consider all your options, their likely results and how they fit with what’s important to you, then make your choice. Even if your choice is to do the must-do task, notice what happens to your attitude once you’ve made a conscious choice.

2) Watch your language: again, when you notice must-do feelings, reflect on your self-talk. What are you actually telling yourself? Are you saying “I have to do...”, “I should do...” or “I must do...”? When you notice this, instead say to yourself “I choose to do this.” The first time you try it, like any new habit, it may feel odd, so say it aloud! After a few attempts, you’ll get used to it and that’s when you might notice something powerful shift for you.

The life we have is the life we choose

Remember, no-one else can make us do anything unless we choose to. This means that when we do anything, only we are responsible for doing it. Did Zidane have a choice to not head-butt Materazzi? I believe he had absolute choice. No-one else can be responsible for Zidane’s attack but Zidane himself. Knowing and practicing conscious choice can be very empowering.

The moment we get it – that we have a choice in everything we do – is the moment we can take responsibility for our decisions and their consequences. It’s the moment we can stop being a victim.

It’s the moment we can tap into vast oceans of deep personal power. When we practice budgeting, planning and choosing, we take more control in getting the life we want, because the life we have comes from the choices we make.

by Brent Combrink

About Brent Combrink: Brent owns ProMentor, the business leaders’ thinking partner. He works as coach and mentor with executives, entrepreneurs and IT professionals in doing better business better. Contact Brent at brent@promentor.co.za

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