Ep #85: How to Make Your To-Do List Easier

Do you dread looking at your to-do list each day? You’re definitely not alone. A difficult to-do list is a common source of stress for clinicians everywhere. But there is one powerful tool called the 3 Bs that has transformed my own to-do list, ultimately making it easier to handle. 

The 3 Bs stand for: bag it, barter it, and better it. By systematically applying these questions to each item on your list, you can quickly identify tasks that can be eliminated, delegated, or made more enjoyable. The result is a shorter, easier, and dare I say – fun! – to-do list.

If you’re a busy clinician who wants to magnify your impact without burning out, this episode is a must-listen. You’ll walk away with an immediately applicable tool to make even your most stressful responsibilities feel lighter, which is what we all want as clinicians. 

We have some networking opportunities here at Abilities Rehabilitation, and you’re invited! If you want to come to one of our intimate (but not exclusive) events, you can email me here.

If you love what I’m sharing in this podcast and you want more, you can download my free Getting it All Done at Work process!

We have a few positions we’re hiring for here at Abilities Rehabilitation. Click here to review and apply for our vacancies, or forward this post to anyone you know who may be interested! If you want more information, email me here or DM me on Instagram.

Episode 85, How to Make Your To-Do List Easier. 

Welcome to Clinicians Creating Impact, a show for physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists looking to take the next step in their careers and make a real difference in the lives of their clients. If you’re looking to improve the lives of neurodiverse children and families with neurological-based challenges, grow your own business, or simply show up to help clients, this is the show for you. 

I’m Heather Branscombe, Therapist, Certified Coach, Clinical Director, and Owner of Abilities Neurological Rehabilitation. I have over 25 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, and I’m here to help you become the therapist you want to be, supporting people to work towards their dreams and live their best lives. You ready to dive in? Let’s go.

Hi there, friend. I hope you’re doing well today. If you’re listening to this when it first comes out, I will actually be on vacation. And I’m so excited for that. But because I’m going on vacation next week, my to-do list is a little bit bigger than normal. Can you relate with that? Does that happen to you as well? 

Now, I’ll have to say, I will gladly take a longer to-do list in the short term in order to get to my vacation, but it caused me to remember a tool that I actually use pretty frequently now, and it really does make my to-do list so much easier. So with that in mind, I thought I’d share it with you today. 

Before I share this tool, I know many of you know this, you probably actually know this as well. But I just want to share this podcast is a passion project of mine because I really do want all clinicians to have the ability to use this kind of tool set and tips, just like the ones I’m sharing today, to magnify their impact, even if they never work alongside us or with us at Abilities. 

I really do actually love sharing tools and tips and information just like this that will make your job easier because I know that if I do that, it will help you to make a bigger impact, both for yourself and ultimately for your clients as well. So you can help me to make this podcast more meaningful by helping to spread the message. More clicks ultimately will help more clients and more clinicians. So I implore you, together let’s make it work out. 

You can do that in a couple of ways. First, if you follow, rate and review this podcast, wherever you’re listening to it, it helps feed the algorithm. And so what happens then is when a clinician just like you is looking for something just like this, it helps for this podcast to come up. Second, you can share this podcast or again, even better yet, if you could share your favorite episode with a fellow colleague, that would be amazing. 

Again, if you’ve heard this before and you meant to do it, maybe you haven’t done it, it’s okay. I say this again and again, but today can be the day. Let this be the sign that today’s the day that you can help other clinicians. 

If this is your first episode, I want to say first, welcome. Thank you so much for listening. And hopefully as you listen, you can decide who of your clinical friends would love to hear more of this kind of information to help them at work. Thank you so much in advance for your action here. Thank you for doing that. And with that, let’s get back to this episode. 

So to make this tool that I want to share a little more interactive, I’d invite you to take out your own to-do list. I’d ask you to make one, but I suspect if you’re like me or most clinicians, frankly, that I know, you probably already have one. It could be a mental to-do list or an actual physical list in a book or in your phone. But I would invite you to actually use that list as I describe the tool that I use on pretty much a weekly basis. 

The tool is called the 3Bs. And actually, again, I learned about it earlier this year and I really have been faithfully using it ever since. It really has helped me not only to shorten my list, but to make my list easier and more fun to do. Is that not a sales pitch? Doesn’t that sound awesome? Let me tell you a little bit more about it. 

So what you want to do is take your list, however it shows up, and you want to look at each item on your list one at a time. So this tool is best used on the items that actually feel hardest for you to complete, because if an item is easy on your to-do list, you probably don’t need an extra tool. And if it’s on your list and it’s easy for you, first, I love that for you. But if all the items on your list are really easy for you and you don’t need this tool, who are you and how can I learn more about you? Email me and we’ll talk more. 

But I’m going to assume here that you have some challenging things on your list, and maybe those things on your list stay on your list day after day, week after week, and maybe even longer. 

So as you look at each challenging item on your list, you want to ask yourself these three questions. First, can I beg this item? Beg being the first B in the three B’s tool. So what I mean by that is, do you actually need to do this item? 

Now, beg sounds kind of casual, but I’d actually invite you to think about why you actually need to, or more importantly, want to do the item that’s on your list. So for example, I could have on my list to email or follow up in some other way with a colleague on my list. Do I actually need to do that? 

Well, no, nobody will die if I do not follow up on a colleague. But I normally want to do that kind of thing because I care about colleagues. I probably care about this colleague in particular. I care about the relationship and I care about the collaboration that I am to this person. So just notice that that brief kind of question, can I beg it, can help you to see your why for doing the item, which can hopefully make it just a little bit easier. 

But how about something that might not be as easy? Something like charting, if you’re like me, or some other kind of documentation. Again, do you actually need to do it? Well, factually, for most cases, it’s a no. Again, no one will die if you don’t chart. I mean, there may be some cases where that actually might happen, depending on where you work. But for the most part, the answer really is no. And if they would, again, that’s a pretty compelling reason why you would want to do it. 

The truth is for most charting or documentation, we do it because it’s a rule that we’re following. And in truth, we really don’t want the potential consequences of not following that rule. So can I beg charting? Maybe yes, in the short term, but no, in the long term. So again, just notice the questions that give you a bit more space to decide what is in your best interest. 

Maybe there’s an item on your list right now that when you ask yourself if you can beg it, the answer is yes. What a beautiful way to get that item off of your to-do list. 

So second, I’d ask you to go to question number two. Question number two is, can I barter it? Barter being the second B in this three B list. So barter could be, can I get someone or something else to do it instead of me, myself? And I like this question because I like the creativity that comes with it. 

So if we come back to those two examples that I had, if I look at following up with a colleague, I may or may not want to follow up in person, but through technology I probably could follow up in a more efficient way, be it email, a phone call, a text, Marco Polo, or whatever else feels appropriate to our relationship. And it could be efficient and more effective depending on what the circumstances are. 

Depending on your circumstances, you might even be able to get someone else to check in on that colleague. Now, again, that probably wouldn’t be my first choice, but again, that could be a legitimate option for you. 

How about with charting or documentation? You probably can’t get someone else to do it for you. If you do, that’s amazing, but you probably could use templates or some other kind of software to help you to make charting or other kind of documentation faster or easier. This is where just asking that barter question can help you to open your mind to your own unique solutions. 

And then the third question is, can I better it? Better being the third B in this list. So if you can’t beg the task or barter it to help ease the load, or maybe there’s a part where you can make it easier, maybe you can even make it more fun and easier still by making the task better. 

So for the example of following up with a colleague, I often like to pair that with things like a lunch or a coffee date if I can, because I like to go out and socialize in that way. Better is truly subjective, so that might not be a better thing for you. But only you and your beautiful brain will be able to decide what is better for you and your situation. 

For the example of charting, I see people making it better by doing it in batches, making notes along the way to make remembering it easier when they’re charting, or sometimes just charting in real time to make it faster. Others still I’ve seen chart to music or chart with a favorite drink or a snack or doing it in an environment that actually feels better for them. 

Just notice the options are kind of endless on how to make things better, and the fun can be in finding and exploring ways to make something that feels challenging better. So next time you have a challenging item on your to-do list, I’d offer for you to use the three B’s to make it easier. How can I beg it? How can I barter it? Or how can I better it to make it easier and or maybe more fun? 

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Yes, I’m busy. Aren’t we all busy? But I’m here to tell you I am never too busy to talk to you. You can always email me heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com and let’s continue the conversation. With that, I hope you have an amazing week and I’ll talk to you soon.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review to let me know what you think and to help others find Clinicians Creating Impact. 

It doesn’t have to be a five-star rating, although I sure hope you love the show. I’d really want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. To learn more about me and the work that I do, visit my website at www.abilitiesrehabilitation.com/clinicianscorner to download your free getting it all done at work process and to see what I’m up to. Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Clinicians Creating Impact podcast. Want to learn more about the work I’m doing with Abilities Rehabilitation? Head on over to abilitiesrehabilitation.com. See you next week. 

Follow the podcasts