How Different Would Your Life Be With an Empty Should List?

Half the time you hire a coach, a consultant, advisor, whatever—and I say this as one, by the way—they tell you something that you already knew. The reason that you're stuck usually isn't that you don't have the answer; it's that you've got a mile-long "should list" and almost nothing on the "done list." We're not moving things that we should do in the back of our mind to the done category, and that is the source of the problem.

So here's an exercise that'll probably do more for you than your next hire. Think about it. We hire people from outside to get unstuck, right? To help us grow the business, get healthy, fix the relationship, whatever—personal and professional, all of it. We hire outsiders to help get unstuck, and a lot of the time what they tell us isn't actually new. The business coach says, "Oh, you need to start that marketing campaign, you need to build that budget, you need to make that hire, you need to document that process and start handing it off," and you already kind of knew it.

The same thing with your health, the same thing with fitness. It happens constantly in virtually every aspect of our life, and it's because we build this mental should list in the back of our minds. We recognize what we need to do, and we tack a "should" onto it, then we file it away and we never actually get it done.

I had this exact same conversation with somebody recently. He was asking for my advice, went through the whole thing, and I said, "Well, what do you think you should do?" It was a specific sales thing. He said, "Well, probably this, and this, and this." And I said, "Yeah, sounds about right, man. So why don't you go do that?" And the reaction was, "I know, I know..." And that's what he needed. He just needed somebody else to say, "Yeah, that thing that you know you should do, you really need to do it." You move it into the actual to-do category, you act, you do it, and then move it to the done. Next day he starts doing it, comes back, and he's like, "Man, I should have started this before." And I was like, "Yeah dude, I know, because I do the same thing everybody does."

Here's what I've come to realize. A whole lot of the times that we feel stuck—if we're not moving as fast as we want, if we're stagnant, if we're spinning—it's because we've got a bunch of shit sitting in the should list instead of the done list.

So I want to actually challenge you to do something. Sit down and itemize it. Keep a real list. "I should build that sales report for the team. I should fire that person. I should hire that person. I should start that marketing campaign. I should document a process." Whatever it is. Just get it on paper, get it into an Apple Note. Every time you have one of those, drop it into a should list.

Then think about how different your business or your life would look like if you converted everything on that should list into dones. If you moved them into a real to-do list, focused on those things, knocked them out, and then dragged them over to done. That's where the friction is. Think about how different your business would be, or your life be, or your relationship be, if all the things that you should do were things that you were actually doing.

(By the way, if you like exercises like this or discussions like this—stuff that you can actually run every week—that's basically what I do in my newsletter. You can sign up for free at raysemail.com if you're interested.)

So here's the part that actually matters. Now, I'm not saying to do this on every bright idea that you have. I've got ADHD, I know how that goes. You chase every shiny object, and you're going to end up spread too thin. You're going to change directions every 24 seconds, and that's not what this is. I'm not saying go after every single impulsive thing that comes up.

What I'm saying is that you probably already know what you need to do to get where you need to be. And the friction isn't in the knowing. It's in the doing. So build a should list. Every single time that you catch yourself saying, "I should do that thing," open your phone and write it down. And the next time that you feel stagnant—before you call somebody, before you hire somebody, before you go ask for help—go look at that list first. Chances are the answer is sitting in there. You just have to do it.

And that, frankly, is the hard part. Now, knowing how to do it is a different animal, and maybe there are some resources that you need to help figure out how to do it. But you know what to do, and by the way, a lot of times we know how to do it if we just trust our intuition a little bit.

So here's how I get myself into actually doing the thing. If I can schedule it, I schedule it. But first, I figure out why am I procrastinating. And that's the part that's actually useful. When you look at these things that you're not doing that are on a should list, understand: why am I procrastinating this? Is it because I don't know how to do it? Is it because I feel like it's going to take forever? Is it some other reason? Name the thing. "Oh, I don't have time. I don't have six hours to block that thing out." And that's usually the case for me. It's usually a time commitment.

For me, setting that thing up is going to take six hours of real, concentrated work. So once I recognize that, I go into the calendar and I block that time out. And I don't block it out for a month from now; I block it out for tomorrow, for this week, for next week—the sooner the better, or over the weekend. And then when it comes, I just fucking do it.

Here's what's interesting. Once I've actually committed to it, two things tend to happen. One is, a lot of times, I can't wait to do it, so I just get it done early. I put this big block on for Monday of next week because that's the first time it looks like I have on my calendar. Well, it's interesting because once I've committed to doing it psychologically, I end up getting it done before then a lot of times anyway. You've already committed, the subconscious starts getting it rolling.

The second thing is, even if I'm waiting to do something, what I notice is my brain starts working in the background. It's like the subconscious starts prepping me. "Oh, I need to answer this question before I sit down next week. Oh, I'm going to need to talk to so-and-so before I sit down and knock this out." All these loose ends that I didn't realize were probably keeping me from moving that thing forward start popping up. Because I know it's on my calendar, if I'm going to sit down and want it done on that four-hour or six-hour block, the prerequisites to do that start brewing up. Which, by the way, were probably baked into procrastinating the thing in the first place.

But your brain kind of shifts into execution mode. And that's how—at least for me—that's how I turn shoulds into dones. If I look at a should list, I know every single time, how different would the thing that I'm thinking about (business, health, relationship) be if I just did those things? That's where it's at. I hope it helps. Adios.