What Makes it Onto Your To-do List and Why?
This is the Happy Scientist podcast. Each episode is designed to make you more focused, more productive, and more satisfied in the lab. You can find us online at bitesizebio.com/happy scientist. Your hosts are Kenneth Vogt, founder of the executive coaching firm, Vera Claritas, and doctor Nick Oswald, PhD, bioscientist, and founder of Bite Size Bio.
Nick Oswald:Hello. This is Nick Oswald welcoming you to this Bite Size Bio webinar which today is a live episode of the Happy Scientist podcast. If you would like to become a happier, healthier, and more productive scientist, you are in the right place. With me as always is the Bite Size Bio Team's mister Miyagi. His name is mister Kenneth Vogt.
Nick Oswald:In these sessions, we hear from Ken mostly on principles that will help shape you for a happier and more successful career. And all along the way, I'll pitch in with points from my personal experience as a scientist and from working with Ken myself. If you have any questions along the way, put them into the questions box on the side of your screen and I'll put them to Ken, and today we will be discussing what makes it onto your to do list and why. Over to you Ken. Alright.
Kenneth Vogt:You know, in the past, we have talked about having a a not to do list, but sooner or later, I knew I needed to get around to talking about that common thing that that everybody has to have. You gotta have some way of organizing the stuff you need to get done any given day. And, typically, we call it a to do go to do list. Here's the thing about this, though. There there's 2 parts to this this question that is what and why.
Kenneth Vogt:So, you know, first, we have to look at what is even getting on to our to do list. It stuff floats out there, and it doesn't get examined. It's just you get confronted with a task, and, you know, you dutifully add it to your list. And that's not a terrible thing to do. Sometimes you you don't wanna second guess everything that comes your way and just get it down there and, you know, we'll we'll deal with it.
Kenneth Vogt:Now there are some things that some red flags do pop up when when a task is presented to you, and that's when you start getting into the why. You know? Why why would I wanna put this on my to do list? And it could be because you feel compelled to do it. It could be because somebody else feels compelled for you to do it.
Kenneth Vogt:It could be because somebody else has authority to tell you to do it. I mean, there's there are various possibilities, but you just need to be aware of what's happening. Why why this thing? Why should this make it onto my list? Because I'm sure we've all had that situation where we decide to get back into really using a to do list.
Kenneth Vogt:Because, you know, we we were using it for a while, and then we sort of stopped, and then we realized why we used to have a to do list. Then we end up with a list that every day we get down the line and there's 10 things on it, and we crossed off 2 of them. And they weren't even the first 2 or the most important 2. They were just 2. And then we take those other 8, and we just move forward to tomorrow where we're as likely to finish 2 of them, you know, as a and not likely to finish 8 of them.
Kenneth Vogt:So it's like, that's not a functional functional way to to handle your to do list. And we're gonna talk about why that happens today. It's not so much about the the mechanics of using a to do list because chances are you're familiar with that. And in fact, we've talked about it elsewhere, and others have talked about it in their whole books about it. But I wanna talk about what is happening underneath, not just the facts and figures of what's in it on your to do list, but the other factors.
Kenneth Vogt:So another factor that pops up is who. Who set the priority here? Who is making me put this on my to do list? You know, there's there's all kinds of possibilities there. And it could be did it to yourself.
Kenneth Vogt:It could be that it's your boss. And, you know, when your boss assigned you tasks, that kinda matters. Right? You don't leave something off the to do list because who do they think they are? Well, they're the guy that signs my check.
Kenneth Vogt:I guess that does kinda matter. But other cases, it's colleagues. You know, you're working in a collaborative environment in the lab, and other people need you to do things. And if you don't do your part, they can't do their part, and and they won't do the things you want them to do that would help you. So, you know, there's there's that give and take of of the social part of the job.
Kenneth Vogt:But mostly, the things that get on your to do list are things that you assign to yourself. And how many of those things show up there for purely emotional reasons? Now you may look at that and say, listen. I'm I'm a professional. You know?
Kenneth Vogt:I'm I'm a cold logician. I'm not being controlled by my emotions. I'm not so much saying that you're being controlled by your emotions, but the fact is emotions do play a part. And how you feel about certain tasks will influence what you do. And then and then not just how you handle the task, but whether or not that task even makes it onto your list.
Kenneth Vogt:Whether or not that task floats up to the top of the list or falls down to the bottom and keeps getting passed over to the next day and the next day and the next day. So when we think about the who of this, you know, there are there are people that are getting things on our list because they're a nag. Right? There are people that get on our list because they're a harpy. They just make a lot of noise.
Kenneth Vogt:There are people that get things onto our list by being condescending. Well, you wouldn't fail to do this, would you? And then there are those that get things on your list just by being control freaks. They might be your boss, but they might not be. They might be they might be a Cali or there was somebody even outside of your normal process, but you just you can't avoid their efforts to control you.
Kenneth Vogt:And then finally, all of these things, the nag, the heartbeat, the condescender, the control freak, they all likely are aspects of yourself. Now now some of those things you might take umbrage at. Right? Some of those things you might be offended of. Don't you can call me you can call me a harpy, but don't you dare call me a control freak.
Kenneth Vogt:Well, if you're having an emotional response to any of these labels being attached to you, that is something you really need to look at because chances are there's some truth in it. And, you know, it's it's an interesting thing how emotions will guide us back to facts. You know what? If it's just if it's just the cold hard numbers, like, look. This has to be done by Friday.
Kenneth Vogt:It's gonna take me 3 days. I'd better get it on my list today and give myself a little wiggle room. Okay. That's reasonable. And that's not a particularly emotional thing to say.
Kenneth Vogt:But if it's, oh my god. It's due on Friday. I I I I haven't even started yet. What am I gonna do? I mean, we know when we're having that kind of response to stuff, and we do need to take note of it.
Kenneth Vogt:And we're we're costing ourselves additional stress because, you know, it's Monday. A task that will take me 3 days will easily be done by Friday as long as other things aren't getting in the way. I don't need to be emotional about that. I don't need to I don't need to have my emotions control me about that. Let's put it that way.
Kenneth Vogt:Because I never wanna say that you're being wrong because you have a feeling about something. Because, you know, emotions are part of the human experience, and we are surrounded by other people that are emotional too. And it's one of the reasons why they're trying to get things under our to do list. So if we just we just accept that emotions occur. I I remember.
Kenneth Vogt:You you know you know the, you know you know the popular saying, and I I won't repeat it here, Joel. We're we're gonna keep it very family friendly here even though we're talking to all adults here. And I saw a t shirt once that distract me. It said, doo doo occurs. And that that that is just a nice polite way to say what happens.
Kenneth Vogt:And that that doo doo is emotions. Yeah. Our our emotional response to task will impact how we decide to do them, when we decide to do them, how will we execute them. And if you don't process that stuff, it will have impacts on you. It will it will affect your professionalism.
Kenneth Vogt:It'll affect your productivity. It'll impact how dependable you are, how responsible you are are considered to be. You know, all that stuff matters. And on on the on the plus side of it, though, on on the good side is there's nothing wrong with having emotions about stuff, about tasks you need to do, about things that that are associated with your job. It's just a matter of recognizing it and realizing it's part of part of what happens and giving other people room for it too, because they're gonna have passions about things, and they're gonna have opinions about things.
Kenneth Vogt:And, and that may be why they're pushing you to do certain things, which then, of course, make it to your to do list. So I'm gonna pause for a second here and take a breath, and we'll see if Nick wants to add anything up to now.
Nick Oswald:I'm trying to figure out what this all this has to do with chocolate ice cream, but anyway.
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. It was the friendliest picture I could find.
Nick Oswald:With chocolate buttons. Okay. The yeah. I don't know. To to do list is my Achilles' heel as a or an Achilles' heel of mine and but I I do know this I do know some good systems, for controlling it.
Nick Oswald:And but I but the emotional response is what scuppers it. And it's quite interesting. I don't think I've ever heard you talk about it from this angle. It just make you you put things off. It's probably resonates with a lot of people.
Nick Oswald:You put things off because you think it's gonna be difficult or it's gonna take too long or something. And
Kenneth Vogt:Or all kinds of things that where you've attached a reason.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. And then
Kenneth Vogt:Well, this is my reasonable response when it's actually your emotional response.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. And then you, and then they stay on the list for ages and they that causes more emotions, and then you just feel crowded, then you stop using the to do list. And before you know it, you're you're living out of emails as your to do list and and then you're chocolate chocolate ice cream creak.
Kenneth Vogt:Exactly. And and and, you know, we don't want. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to be living as a pinata that's just being smacked around by anybody and everybody. So let me move on to this this notion here.
Kenneth Vogt:The idea of bad associations spoil useful habits. It's a great phrase. Comes comes from a lawyer, but it's a great phrase. And how you feel about completing certain tasks and how you feel about the people involved can have a huge impact on what you do, when you do it, how well you do it, and whether it gets the priority it should. And we all know those the we have those those button pushing issues.
Kenneth Vogt:You know? There's a job that needs to be done, but it involves that person. I don't like dealing with that person. I don't like working with them. I don't like responding to them.
Kenneth Vogt:And even though the task itself may not be a problem, the association with that person becomes a problem for us. It could be something as simple as like, oh, there's that email I've been putting off responding to and putting off, and I just don't wanna have to deal with it. And it's just it's just an email. And there are other emails. We're we're firing off replies, all kinds of other stuff, but there's that one.
Kenneth Vogt:Well, we don't wanna deal with that. And, again, it's the association with something about it that that bothers us. Or, you know, in the lab, you're dealing with with some pretty high-tech instruments, and some of them take take skill and training and and, I say some of them. All of them do, but some of them take more skill and training than others. And maybe you're intimidated by that instrument, and that's enough to slow you down on a particular task.
Kenneth Vogt:And it's just a matter of, well, I either have to get better at this or I've gotta take the extra time to get more skilled or I've gotta ask for help. You know, whatever it is, there's the association with the task that is what's the actual problem. So we because we look at the task, say, well, I'm not avoiding the task. I'm avoiding what's associated with the task. And when you uncover that, it may make you realize, I see a pattern here.
Kenneth Vogt:I see what's happened to me. And we may then too realize that, well, there's a way out of this. I need to I need to bury the hatchet with that person. You know, we've had some bad blood. I gotta gotta work that out.
Kenneth Vogt:Or we've had some miscommunication. I I need to unravel that. Or maybe it's I need to get more skilled. Maybe I need to ask for training. Maybe I need to ask for mentorship.
Kenneth Vogt:So start looking for what associations are causing you trepidation or are pushing you away. Because sometimes the task itself, it doesn't appear clear. Like, why wouldn't I do this? It's just it's just the task. It's just respond to the email.
Kenneth Vogt:It's just run this test. What why would I avoid that? Well, the reason why is for some of these other factors. So look for them. And, you know, you do have to you have to engage yourself on this because this is this is happening within you.
Kenneth Vogt:Your emotions are very personal. And I don't mean to say that they can't be shared with others or that you're embarrassed about them or anything like that. It's just nobody else really knows what's going on inside of you. You though know what's going on inside of you. And it's important for you to to keep strengthening how well you know what's happening inside of yourself.
Kenneth Vogt:Now when we when we look to the exterior, the the fact is you are dealing with other people and you have people that have authority and power over you. So, you know, are other people pulling your strings in such a way that's causing you problems? You know? We mentioned somebody might be nagging. Somebody might be condescending, or maybe somebody who's micromanaging.
Kenneth Vogt:And, you know, if you're putting off things because you're trying to avoid that entanglement with the task, well, you need to be aware of that, especially if it's gonna be detrimental to you. If you're avoiding something because you're bugged about the micromanagement. But if you don't do the task, it's gonna hurt you. You know? So you you wanna be aware of that.
Kenneth Vogt:And there's there's combinations of this stuff going on at any given moment. I'm being nagged about this task. I'm being micromanaged about this task. I'm being both nagged and micromanaged about this other task. You know, it's good to know the mix and just just get some clarity about that.
Kenneth Vogt:And remember, these are just facts. You where where you're likely reacting is your emotional response to the facts. I've gotten 3 emails and a phone call from my boss. Those are just facts. If that stresses you, that's that is a totally different factor.
Kenneth Vogt:If if it's just, you know, somebody I don't care that they're calling, I don't care if they're emailing, well, there's not not a huge emotional factor there. But, you you know, you need to to look at yourself and say, what is what is the environment that this task on my to do list lives in or this potential task for my to do list? And then and then you go from there. So the bottom line is it all comes down to awareness, and I'm talking about self awareness. We've talked about this before.
Kenneth Vogt:Awareness has actually become quite a hotbed topic in the scientific world. It used to be thought of as kind of this woo woo thing that was that was out there on the fringes. It's like, it's not. It's now been studied quite extensively, actually, and and it has been well established that maintaining awareness, situational awareness, interpersonal awareness, personal awareness, all of those things will have a huge impact on your productivity, how well you accomplish tasks, how successful you are in overall, it's absolutely a career building thing to hone your own awareness. It can make you more productive.
Kenneth Vogt:It can make you more dependable. As a result, that can make you more influential. I mean, all of these things are huge upside. And then, of course, as you accomplish more tasks, you get more experience. And when you get more experience, you get more confidence.
Kenneth Vogt:And that allows you to handle things easier and harder. And things things that used to be uncomfortable become comfortable. And now people are willing to say, hey. Bob is the guy to handle this this this scary new thing. And when you're Bob, you know, that's that's not a bad thing.
Kenneth Vogt:Now, I mean, if you're constantly being being assigned as firefighter, you know, maybe that's not the best of environments. But if you're aware of that and if you if you're okay with it, great. If you're not okay with it, being aware of it, it will allow you to put a stop to it. All these things are the benefits of staying aware and being aware of your own your own emotional reactions is useful even if they're just kind of low burning behind the scenes. Nobody else knows about it, but this thing annoys you a bit.
Kenneth Vogt:This thing scares you a little bit. This thing tires you a little bit. If you're aware of that, great. But you may also find too that this excites you. This piques your curiosity, this feels well within your wheelhouse and, like, you're super confident about it.
Kenneth Vogt:Those are all aspects of awareness too. It's not all about looking for problems. You know, sometimes you wanna look for things that are making you feel good and feel confident and make you want to go to work every day and make you want to do the job. So I will pause again for you, Nick.
Nick Oswald:Well, I think that this is this is this is another one of these episodes where I wonder whether you made it for me because I'm I'm right here at the moment and I've been trying to figure out that I I thought you were gonna talk about a system today, the to do list system. I think we should actually do a presentation on that at some point soon, because there's well documented systems for managing to do list and so on, and I know them inside out and but I'm not doing it and I haven't done it for a long time and and I and I've been trying to figure out why And it's a you've just brought me to the the the awareness that the reason is so there's a straight and narrow path of operating that system, and it means you diligently do what you need to do. You organize your you know, what comes in, you triage, you do what's needed Mhmm. And you keep tracking on and things don't build up. Okay?
Nick Oswald:You don't you don't build up, you don't carry tasks on and on and on. You you you you you work the system again. We can talk about it in another episode. And and then, it works for you. The reason it stops working is when you get into a cycle where instead of on that straight and narrow path where you just do everything regardless of what it is, you know, when it needs to be done, You get passed into either doing what you the bits of it that you enjoy most or that you like the most or into the ones that panic you the most.
Nick Oswald:Right? Because you need to get it done today or because someone is breathing down your neck or because, oh my god, I've left this has been on the the the to do list for weeks and it hasn't been done, you know. And, and so you end up into the cycle that what's driving you is, for me, it's that. It's the second one of those. It's not doing what are the best that I like the most all the time.
Nick Oswald:There's a little bit of that, but it's mostly the avoiding doing that straight and narrow path and getting passed on to doing, you know, things that just needs to be done. Everything's last minute. And
Kenneth Vogt:Right.
Nick Oswald:Then that just creates its own stress, and that stress then just, you know, goes up in a spiral where it ends up that all you have time to do is the things that are the last minute.
Kenneth Vogt:Right.
Nick Oswald:And and then and and one other aspect, that might just be me. Right? I don't know if that's everyone. If it is, then put tell me in the answers in the questions and or or or what what is what is your version of this? But that's my version of this.
Nick Oswald:One other other thing that struck me is that one thing that people leave off their to do list, a lot and then that's and are the first things that fall off that straight and narrow path are time for creativity and time for rest. And and so then that's what happens. You get you can get sucked so much into that one side of what you have to do or or, you know, which is the stuff that really needs to be done now that you forget all of this other stuff and it just creates this ball of, oh my god. I'm never getting out of this, and, all I'm doing is things that needed to be done 3 days ago. You know?
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. Yeah. There's there's another pattern that some folks fall into is they look at their list and go, what's the easiest thing to do? And that's what they do. And then it's like, oh, what's the next easiest thing to do?
Kenneth Vogt:What they end up doing then is only the easy stuff. They never do the hard stuff. So, you know, I will make a suggestion there. When you look at your list like that, you know, first, there are time relevant tasks. Well, this meeting happens at this time, so that's when I got it's at 9 AM.
Kenneth Vogt:That's when I gotta do it. But there are other things that are just that that don't have the time constriction. At the start of your day, when you're freshest or whatever you're freshest, you you know your own pattern. Although I think it is typical people to be fresher first thing for the day, do the hardest thing on your list first. Do the thing you least wanna do first.
Kenneth Vogt:Get it over with. Because if that's on your list and you every time you look at your list again, it's like, there's that ugly thing. I'm gonna do something else. The The next time you look at your list, that ugly thing is still there. You know?
Kenneth Vogt:And that'll keep happening over and over again, and you're giving yourself a bad experience over and over again even as you're accomplishing things, and it doesn't feel like accomplishment. Whereas if you get that one ugly thing done first, great. You know, rip the band aid off, get it over with. And often, as you get into things, you find they're not as hard as you thought. And or you find at least you're up to it.
Kenneth Vogt:You can handle it. So that that's just another pattern that people fall into. But, yes, Nick, we can have an episode talking about these systems that you know well, and you could take the lead on that one.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. I'll tell you what the systems I know very well, and I teach other people and so on and don't do myself because I do exactly what you just said, which I didn't realize was a was another layer. But, yeah, that's interesting. You you're always every day is a school day.
Kenneth Vogt:Well, you know, I I I wanted to cover the emotional side of this because so many people that are engaged in this level of science, you know, they're all about the facts and figures. They're all about the data. They'll they live in that world constantly. That isn't necessarily your most natural spot. And sometimes we forget how human we really are.
Kenneth Vogt:And we think, well, that's being childish. That's being immature. But, no, it's not. It's being human. There's nothing wrong with emotion.
Kenneth Vogt:Emotion is a very useful tool. It has kept the human race alive for, you know, all these generations. We're still here. You'll notice that emotions have never been evolved out of us. They're important.
Kenneth Vogt:They play a role, and we wanna make positive use of them. We wanna make effective use of them. And when it comes to a practical thing like a to do list, this is this is a great way to show an example of here's how to use your emotion to steer things in a proper direction. Well, that was pretty much what I wanted to talk about today. Is there anything else you wanted to add, Nick?
Nick Oswald:Well, no. Apart from well, maybe we could talk about I I think I was expecting so I don't always know what you were going you're gonna say in these, these things. And in this case, I thought you were gonna talk about the practicality rather than the emotion. I I think it'd be really great to maybe next time, for us to to do that one about the, about to do list systems and then refer back to this, this emotional side of how it can get sidetracked. There's a couple of questions come in about, you know, how do you, tackle things on your to do list, when the how do I don't know.
Nick Oswald:How do you how do you mean motivation and focus, and how do you tackle things that arise unexpectedly on your, to do list or unexpected priorities arrive? Those are the practicality side. There there is emotion involved there actually as well. Sure. The the system so what we talked about today was the system, the emotion rather, the emotional side handling the emotional side that that will derail any system you put in place if you let it and
Kenneth Vogt:next Exactly. That that that's why I think it's important that we cover this first.
Nick Oswald:Okay.
Kenneth Vogt:Because it won't no system will work for you if you allow you, if your emotions end up just taking control of it all. And Right. If you're unaware of that, that's that's the worst case scenario.
Nick Oswald:I really think this is worth diving into. So, again, next time we'll look at a system, but I think it might also be we have a discussion and we'll talk, talk about how to approach it. But after the next after we talk about the system, we'll do another episode that kind of pulls us all together and talks about how do you handle those emotions to stop yourself being, sidetracked and derailing any to do process. Because really those three things together explain the emotions, explain the practical system, and then put them together. If you can get that right, if we can get that right, that's gonna help a lot of people to to stay productive, and reduce stress in their life a lot, in the professional life especially.
Nick Oswald:And I'm taking notes already, so this is gonna be great.
Kenneth Vogt:Well and and folks you're seeing here live on live and on on camera, Nick is putting things on my to do list. And you'll notice too I pushed back a little bit. I said, no. I think we needed to do this part first. But I didn't say, okay.
Kenneth Vogt:Now you can't put that on the list. I was like, no. He's right. He's right. And and I need to sway to that.
Kenneth Vogt:You know? I need to say, okay. I even though I wanted to talk about emotion, the the the facts and figures part of this is also an important part of the conversation. And I love the tie up of okay. Now now that we've learned both sides of this, let's let's look at the outcome and see see how people actually implement.
Kenneth Vogt:So
Nick Oswald:Cool. So next time, look out for, the invitation to the to the next Happy Science webinar. We will I will explain a system that pulls together a few different methodologies that helps you to, to maintain a zero inbox, to maintain, you don't have to hold things in your head anymore, and you, you have always have, an ordered set of, priorities that that you can work to on a day to day basis. So a little day to day system you can use to keep this all under control. Yes.
Nick Oswald:This this, just a question just came in. This has been recorded. You'll be able to find it on, on, Bite Size Bio afterwards. Look out for the invitation. I'll talk about that system, and then we'll, then we'll delve into it in a in a subsequent episode.
Nick Oswald:But this is quite transformative because it's a really important topic, and, yeah, what Ken's just talked about today is the missing piece for me in that jigsaw. So it's gonna be quite interesting. So Cool. Thank you very much.
Kenneth Vogt:I wanna comment on the practical out Sure. Part of this.
Nick Oswald:Go ahead.
Kenneth Vogt:It probably won't be the next episode you see because other other episodes have already been advertised, but it'll be soon. We it it will happen.
Nick Oswald:We'll see. We'll have a discussion. Anyway, okay. Thank you very much, Ken, for the very Alright. Thanks.
Nick Oswald:Insightful, as usual, insightful episode. And thanks everyone for listening in and putting your questions in, whether, whether that be live or on demand. If you're listening on demand and you want to put your questions in, you can do that on our Facebook page at facebook.com, the happy scientist podcast, or using the contact form on Bite Size Bio. You can get to us there. Remember, if this is your first episode, go back to the beginning of this podcast and, and listen to the foundational episodes.
Nick Oswald:The first is it the first six or so Ken? I really go down and they and and talk about fundamental mindsets that we refer to back and forward in these, these episodes. Is it the first 6?
Kenneth Vogt:Yep.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. Okay. You're now I have to look. Yeah. I think it's 6.
Nick Oswald:6 or 8 anyway. And, of course, tell please tell your colleagues, any colleagues that you think would, benefit from this, please tell them about the Happy Scientist so that we can, get this great stuff out to them and help more people. Until then, good luck in your research and goodbye from all of us at Bite Size Bio, including mister Miyagi.
Kenneth Vogt:Bye
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Kenneth Vogt:community.
