February 19, 2026

[PODCAST 316]: Name What You Did Instead (Simple Productivity Tip When Your List Doesn’t Get Done)

25 minutes

Do you ever feel frustrated at the end of the day when you didn’t get everything done that you had hoped?

Today I’m sharing some practical ways to solve this problem so you can consistently “wake up excited and go to bed content”–even when things don’t go as planned.

If you’re new here, I’m April Perry with LearnDoBecome.com, and we help people who are drowning in the details of life to create simple systems so they can do what matters most.

We all know how it feels when you have a list for the day, and then you barely scratch it.

It can feel incredibly challenging, especially when we feel like we’re under pressure, and, to compensate, we might either push ourselves beyond what’s healthy in order to get it all done–or we get frustrated with ourselves (or with others) for not completing what was needed, and that can lead to a general sense of powerlessness over our schedules, decreased confidence in our ability to get things done, or an increase of overall tension we feel as we approach each day.

FIRST, we want to make sure our lists are super short and that we put things on our N/A list or Routines List as much as possible, so only the MUST dos are on our list for the day. That solves a lot of it. Most of what we have on our list is stuff we want, but it’s flexible.

Then, if you still don’t complete what felt like a manageable list…name what you did instead–and then use that as an educational experience to figure out if you need to make changes for the future or if you just need to accept that some days require more flexibility.

If you clearly name what you did instead, you’ll start to see patterns. Here are a few questions you could ask yourself that might be helpful:

Am I simply procrastinating because this feels complicated or I don’t think I should actually be doing this?

Am I working on hidden projects I never actually wrote down?

Am I booking myself too tightly–not creating enough buffer for rest and replenishment?

Am I being fully honest about how much time things actually take?

Did I respond to an “interruption” that was simply a higher priority, so I was living according to my true values?

Am I working within healthy boundaries? Do I need to strengthen those boundaries in the future–potentially creating more space for mental focus?

To bring this to life, I’ll give a recent example from my life. I had a few computer/creative projects on my list one day, and I got only a fraction of my work done. Not wanting to repeat that scenario, I named what I did instead:

We had a repairperson come to fix a couple of faucets and our water pressure, so the morning routine had been shifted a bit to get things done in advance before the water was turned off. Things I would have done later were now front-loaded.

The repairperson left a lot of dirt on the kitchen floor, so I got out the vacuum, and as long as I was vacuuming 1 room, I did 4 other adjoining rooms.

We also had someone come to fix our front window, so there was a little back and forth as we were talking about what needed to be done, checking the work, etc. Not a ton on my end, but still–it caused more starts and stops in the middle of what was supposed to be “focused work.”

I also spent more time messaging back and forth with a nutritionist I recently hired, so I stopped my work whenever a message came in.

There was a big rainstorm that day, and after walking the dog, she was super wet and needed extra towels to get her dry, and then I was soaked, so I needed to change my clothes, so all of that added to the tasks of the day.

I got some new ideas for something we’re working on in our business, so I took 20 minutes to get things outlined and organized.

Eric wanted to update me on some things related to a project we’ve been working on, so we had an impromptu chat in my office for 20 minutes or so.

Looking back, now it’s pretty clear why I didn’t get as much done that day as I’d hoped.

And when we had children in our home, the situations were very similar (someone came home feeling really sad/happy/curious/worried and wanted to talk, someone needed help with a homework assignment, someone wanted me to see something funny or just visit…I don’t regret any of those moments).

If you catch yourself in a situation like this, here are a couple of questions that might be helpful:

Question #1: Can I adjust my expectations for the rest of the day to acknowledge the energy that was spent on these other things?

The former version of me would have just worked into the night and pushed myself until everything got done, and sometimes that might be necessary, but that kind of “work ethic” tends to keep me in a constant state of vigilance that isn’t sustainable long-term. The new version of me went ahead and moved 90 minutes of work over to the next day, when I did have quiet time on the calendar–AND I decided I would pop over to the library to get it done if needed.

Question #2: How can I better match my expectations to my reality in the future?

Whenever a repairperson (or anyone) is scheduled to come to our home, I will recognize it’s either going to take some bandwidth from me OR I will to arrange to be out of the home and have someone else fully managing the details.

Whenever I start a new course or work with a new coach or make adjustments in my life, I will acknowledge it is a project and allow more buffer in my schedule.

I will turn off my phone so that messages don’t distract me when I am trying to focus.

Whenever I decide to just quickly “do one more thing” (like vacuuming 4 more rooms or outline a business idea), I will acknowledge that the extra time didn’t just magically appear. For every yes, there is a no. And that’s fine, as long as it’s truly a higher priority.

I will better utilize my Next Actions List and ease the pressure I put on my calendar-specific task list.

Eric and I will do a simple coordination huddle each morning to discuss our needs and plans. (A little story behind this one… Because Eric and I work from home together and share pretty much every area of responsibility, we realized that all of our random conversations were starting to become a challenge because whenever one of us got an idea, we’d just interrupt the other person to talk about it, and then it felt like we were in mini-meetings all day long, without enough time to do deeper work. This past week, we created a new morning “huddle” on the calendar Monday through Friday to talk about our shared work and make a plan for each day. This will hopefully work for us, but if it doesn’t, we’ll try something else.)

As a note for those who still have children at home, when we were in that stage of life, I found a lot of peace by keeping blocks of time open before and after school and in the evening to just be “available.” Recently, we’ve been keeping Sunday evenings and occasional blocks of time during the week open for our local adult children who often come visit, so we can have dinner, talk, play games, prep meals for the week, or just relax together.

The key is to recognize that, even though every day brings unexpected things, we don’t need to live in constant stress.

We may not have complete control of our time or energy, but we can learn from our experiences and build some simple systems to prepare for the unexpected (or we can create systems to renegotiate our expectations once plans have changed). When we do that, each day becomes less of a struggle and more of a “happy dance.”

Community Celebrations!

Amanda shared, “My area to work on for this month’s topic was my command central. I was motivated afterr the call and as I worked through it, I could feel my energy increasing. After having to split my time last year between our business, handling 2 family probate estates and of course our family life, I needed to revise my command central back to my more “normal” way of doing things. I was able to combine everything back into one command central rather than 3. The cubbies now have the following slots: Read & Review, Immediate Action, Pending, Current Project/Next Actions. My drawer is where I keep my monthly tickler files as well as support material for current projects and future projects. I went through future projects yesterday and it felt so good to decide what to keep and what to let go! Finally, I updated my current projects yesterday board to truly reflect my current projects. I have too many current projects but some are so small or require extended waiting periods, so I left them up there. My energy is BACK! Winter has been rough here in Iowa and as a parent, but now I feel ready to tackle my projects because I know they are all organized into nice bite sized pieces!!! Thank you all for being a part of this group and helping create the energy in it!”

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