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Why You Keep Bumping That Task
What it really means when something stays on your to-do list forever
For me, it’s watching Casablanca.
Every few years, I make a new List of 100 Dreams. This exercise, shared with me years ago by career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine, is a completely unedited list of things I’d like to do in my life. It’s a bucket list but a vastly longer bucket list than most people get around to making, which is why I put watching Casablanca on there. It also includes more usual suspects like visiting wineries in Oregon and seeing Yellowstone in the fall.
Watching Casablanca would take exactly one hour and 42 minutes. Visiting those wineries and Yellowstone took days out of my schedule, not to mention thousands of dollars in travel costs, and yet I have done both of them.
So why have I still not watched Casablanca?
You probably have your own Casablanca — something that keeps getting bumped forward. Maybe it’s a bucket list item, or maybe it’s just something on your weekly or daily to-do lists. It’s easy to feel bad when you’re copying the item onto a new list yet again. But when you keep bumping something forward, the key is to pay attention. You just might learn something about yourself.
Here are three main reasons why we put things off and what they mean:
You aren’t sure what to do
Many to-do list items are tragically vague. Think “research new career options” or even “work on resume.” In these cases, it’s unclear what actions you’re supposed to take or how you will know when you are done, which makes it hard to get started.
It’s more motivating to see something specific and doable, such as “ask three friends what kind of work they think I’d be happiest doing” or “look up sales figures for the last five years to put on my resume.” Better yet, add a spot on the schedule and a time estimate. If you know you’re supposed to spend 30 minutes looking up those sales…
