And 3 simple ways to fix it
There are many interpretations of this enigmatic construct called ‘Confidence’. We project our external confidence through our posture, walk, dress and words while our internal confidence reveals our self-image. Both are well intertwined with each other.
One definition that has resonated with me is — Confidence is the believe in self. It’s the feeling of assurance that you are capable of doing anything regardless of the obstacles. Just strengthening that sense of assurance is what will ultimately enhance your confidence.
Now picture this. You wake up early — energetic and pumped about the day. You pull out your to-do list and list out 27 tasks you will get done before hitting the sack. You have the whole day and feel it’s going to be extremely productive! With the excitement, you complete 2–3 small tasks. Then you end up procrastinating rest of the day and next thing you know its night. You avoid looking at your To-Do list cause you know it’ll make you feel like crap. So you just avoid looking at it.
When days like those accumulate over time, it slowly kills your confidence. And that slow death of confidence is the absolute worst for your self-image. Every time you hit the sack after deliberately avoiding eye-contact with your To-Do list, you’re reinforcing to yourself that you’re incapable of doing what you set out to do. And the next time you really want to take something up, your diminished self-worth will remind you that you may not be able to complete it — Therefore, a lack of confidence. It’s a deadly vortex that we all fall into at some point.
For example, you want to throw a big party for your friend’s upcoming birthday. It involves a lot of work and coordination. You procrastinate the plan execution until the day before and it ends up being a small party with few people. So the next time you decide to organize a birthday party, you won’t have the self-believe that you are capable of giving them a big party — Your Confidence is diminished. You’ll just tell yourself “I’m not good at this. I can’t plan events”. Yeah, that’s because you haven shown yourself that you can plan an event.
Again, confidence is the believe that you can do it — So the more we actually end up completing the tasks we set out to do, the more will be our sense of self-worth and confidence.
Self-Love comes from keeping the promises you make to yourself
So if you catch yourself constantly staring at unchecked boxes on your task list, then time to break out of that loop cause it’s hurting you and your self-image more than you think. The least issue being the actual completion of the task itself. Either the morning enthusiastic version of you is setting high expectations of your future self or you just end up procrastinating endlessly. Either way, the solution is the same.
1. Set a low expectation early on
If you continuously have too many unchecked boxes every single night then learn from these what your daily limit is. It is more important to complete few tasks and feel satisfied than completing the same few tasks and regretting about the incomplete ones.
Start maintaining a track record of your To-List and find out the average number of tasks that you can handle on a daily basis.
Of course, few days are going to be more productive that others. For those days, even if you manage to complete the daily average tasks by evening, then you can add on more if you still feel like you’ve got some juice left (stack one task at a time). You got to get to a point where you actually complete the goals you set out for yourself and feel accomplished by end of the day.
There will be days where you catch yourself staring at unchecked boxes. But hopefully that’s only a minor chuck from the entire list.
Eventually you can work your way up to increase the number of daily tasks you set for yourself. Again, stack just one task at a time to your daily limit.
2. Keep a Daily Highlight
Adding a daily highlight to my to-do list made a huge difference to how accomplished I felt by end of the day.
Daily highlight is just one task (and one task only) that has to be completed no matter what. You can decide what the highlight is either the previous night or early morning but it’s a task that shouldn’t take more than 30–40 mins.
It need not be the task that’s of highest priority. We end up doing high priority tasks anyway. It’s important tasks that are not an immediate urgency which seduces procrastination. Think of daily highlight as one task that will make you happy when you complete it today. Its like your day’s mini-purpose. This task is the reason you’re waking up and the one you will complete before sleeping again.
Completing the daily highlight will give you a slight dose of accomplishment that will catalyze you to finish a little more tasks before calling it a day. Again, you may still have unchecked boxes in your list and that’s almost inevitable. But you can sleep, knowing fully well that you’ve achieved your mini purpose for the day. Only to wake up and accomplish tomorrow’s.
3. Find your sweet spot hours
When I wake up at 5 in the morning, I feel like Eddie from Limitless who just popped an NZT-48. The effect last for about an hour or two where I achieve complete focused flow state and manage to complete a bulk of my daily tasks. I have a 9–5 job so I need to complete a lot before it starts cause I usually feel exhausted after a work day. So I hit the gym for an hour and then complete some less demanding tasks before calling it a day.
Because I’m aware of my daily mental energy curve, I can schedule demanding and creative tasks during my peak time and settle for the low hanging fruits when I’m exhausted. Basically, syncing the task with your mental state to get more done.
So find out your natural NZT hours and your ‘Gosh, I want to punch the wall’ hours and plan out your daily task list accordingly. In fact, split your task list into two — Intense and mellow. I use the tag feature on my TickTick app for this.
Doing this task-energy mapping will go a long way in ensuring that you complete more tasks before calling it a day.
Takeaways:
- Stare at a completed task list before you sleep every night and watch how your internal confidence shoots up. Every single day, you’re reminding yourself that you’re capable of handling whatever you set out to do — Confidence.
- Keep a low expectation of the number of tasks you set for yourself and work your way up, set a daily highlight that you absolutely must complete and find out the time of day when you feel like getting shit done.
- Seeing a lot of checked boxes before hitting the sack is honestly one of the most rewarding feelings out there. It’s almost like a drug you can’t get enough of. And this drug actually helps you do the stuff you want to accomplish. It also increases your self-worth and confidence along the way. What a win-win-win-win!
- Remember, anything you want to accomplish is eventually broken down into tasks in front of an empty square box. It’s time to fill those up!
