Jazz Up Your To-Do List With Some Rewards

This week, my coach Sandy Grason gave me the homework to celebrate the baby steps – celebrate how much I’m getting done, celebrate how faabulous I am. Now, I’ll be honest with you – I am rubbish at this. I usually reward a job well done with more work to do. As you can imagine, this creates exhaustion, overwhelm and a forever sense of too much too do, too little time. Not to mention NO appreciation for my hard work.

So I thought about it, I thought about me, and knowing me as I do, I decided to find a way to incorporate this celebration into the day so I would actually do it. There’s no point leaving it til I finish work, as by then I’m ready to collapse in a heap and don’t have time for my treat. So I have a new “To-Do” list. For every item on that list, I have a ‘reward’, a celebration for having done it, for being fabulous, for achieving. Most of these rewards and celebrations are small…and some of them are things I would do anyway.

But it makes a difference when you intentionally reward yourself for a job well done. I even found myself doing a task I’d been procrastinating just to get the chocolate orange biscuit that was my reward! And I am working more efficiently too, because rather than going from task to task endlessly and getting less and less enthused, after each task completed, I have a little treat – I play a favourite song, I do something fun, I read a magazine for 5 minutes, I go outside and get some air for a couple of minutes, I play mah-jong or spider solitaire, I go on facebook, I sing…and so on.

These little rewards keep me pepped up and energised to move onto the next task. So why don’t you try jazzing up your to-do list with some rewards? If you work for someone else, you might have to think a bit more creatively, but this can still be done. Even rewarding yourself by taking a moment to stretch will help you keep your energy up. And this idea is so important because so many of us rush from task to task, never appreciating how much we get done, how much we achieve on a daily basis…and after a while, that just gets depressing!

So at work, and at home, reward yourself for jobs well done. Make a list of things you love and start using them to reward yourself. Make a star chart, like the kids get – why should they be the only ones getting stars?! Have some fun…and most of all, reward yourself for all the mini-steps you take throughout the day. You’re worth it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – leave me a comment and tell me how you are going to reward yourself!

Love

Donna.x